Today it is Monday and we are gathering wild violets. Last year it was a year for spiderwort, which crept over the strawberries and the clover and all the grasses and popped airy blue flowers out of green jointed stems and I took photographs and looked online until I could name it and I thought “2013 is the year for spiderwort.”
2014 is the year of wild violets. First it was the deadnettle across the dirty winter fields, purple brush strokes scumbling across the dead grass yellow. Then the green grass came and then the wild violets, purple in some fields but white in ours, the lime-riddled alkaline clay.
I always try to tell the truth here and when it feels too much or too big I go quiet but there is always the truth that spring has returned and with it come the small flowers, the neon green new leaves, the babies of every species greeting the earth wide-eyed and unassuming. My own babies hale and hearty little boys who shout and stumble and bring me crumpled dandelions and blades of grass and smell like puppies and every day I wake up I think mine, mine, mine as a chant against the new day that will change them a little more and my mother-heart looking backward and watching the babies recede into the past and looking forward and watching the men coming and feeling the joy sharp-edged with grief, ever mixed.
There. Some true sentences to get me started. Hello. I’m back. I am not quite living a life yet where I feel my voice is being heard, so I will practice whispering into the pages of my website once again, until I am confident enough to shout.