This spring morning/this poem/the uses of this smartphone

This morning I got up early because I had an 8 am Pilates appointment, and wanted to eat and put some beans with onions & garlic in the crock pot before leaving. I abandoned any thought of morning meditation or other practice, but did manage to leave early enough to have time to deliver two thank-you cards to neighbors and then walk slowly & meditatively to my appointment.

I continued my musing that I’d begun a few nights ago, about why spring evenings feel so magical, sensual, and utterly personal to me. On my way, paying mindful attention to the sounds and sights of this cloudy and cold spring morning, the musings began to unfold as a poem. When I got to my appointment I was still early and the building was locked. I was eager for the time to jot a few notes about the poem. I’d dressed what I feared was a bit too warmly for my day, since it was still quite chilly out (42 degrees Fahrenheit), so I happily leaned against the building to wait. I didn’t have paper with me, but I did have my iPhone.

It was pretty cold for fingers and thumbs, and though my gloves are the ones with little holes in the thumb and first finger for just such a purpose, they don’t allow for nimble use. For the first time, I experimented deliberately with the little microphone button on the keyboard, that I’ve only ever used by accident before (and that many times!). As it turned out, my Pilates session had been cancelled, but I didn’t get the message until I’d been standing there for a while (enough to feel mostly done with the poem) and finally decided to check my email.

Happily, dictating a poem worked surprisingly well for me! Here is what came out, with a few minor edits.

this spring  

by becca krantz

why does each warm spring evening feel like a personal blessing to me?

as it is personal for this one magnolia bud ready to burst forth among hundreds of others

perhaps it's because of that night outside the party when I was barely 13 and the lilacs

but Arab Spring felt personal too when we were here in Wisconsin, Occupying.

Yet:

the young woman jogging past, white sweatshirt black pants and bright fuchsia jogging shoes

the small artistic flourish on the gate of the yard I pass

this little sparrow ruffling its feathers to keep warm atop the brick gate-post

this cold spring morning of this, first spring after my cancer

each of us, each day, one bud among billions?

But even this poem-writing feels too self-conscious, for

isn't a spring

above all an allowance?

a gentle upwelling;

sometimes  

a

trickle,

offering what seeps through as a gift into the world?

----------------------

On my walk home, I added a bit to the poem (the sparrow part), and also, because I was still walking mindfully some of the time, found an ID card dropped by an Edgewood College student on her way to school. With the poem still reverberating, I dutifully called the school and put it in an envelope on my porch for her. And I thought, “made a difference to that one,” in reference to the starfish story.