A Calendar of Light

PRELUDE

Is it impossible to plant change?
Let us believe in the resurrection of the earth.
Look how the light is beginning to dim.
There’s so much to love in this undoing.
I will not be silent.

1. JANUARY

Mornings come slowly, the sun reluctant,
its pale face scarcely warming.
We linger at coffee, watch birds at the feeder.
Their foliage is dull, muted.
The sky is barely blue.
We wrap ourselves in layers of wool, withdraw.
January’s not the season of love.
Up on the hill, each black tree is etched,
clean and sharp, whittled down
to limb, branch, twig.
Glass ferns cover the windows,
their fronds blur the thin light.
And here we are, poised on the rim of the year,
every breath visible,
this icy globe turning.
The silence between us deepens,
blue as the shadows in snow.

2. LATE FEBRUARY

and light begins to soften
around the edges. Snow’s flannel
sheets recede, fold back, and look,
the grass is still there,
a fresh green quilt waiting
to be hung on the line.
Crocus cut their teeth
in perennial beds.
Spring holds her breath.
White-throated sparrows whistle up the sun.
Every day, another cup of light.

3. LET US BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE EARTH

Let us believe in the resurrection
of the earth. Forgive us now
our unbelief.

4. MARCH

There is no color anywhere,
in the fields, in the woods,
only the monotony
of buff and brown,
fawn and dun,
smoke, slate, steel,
and now, coming into March,
the coldest nights of the year.
But each day, we climb
a few more inches
up the ladder of light,
and grackles and redwings
return, bringing postcards
of tropical sun.
The eye of the pond widens,
and geese scribble messages
across the grey sky:
“Hold on. Hold on.
It’s coming.”

5. PLANTING

Amidst the horror, the steady rain
of bad news, the worry over climate change,
coastlines drowned
as ice caps melt, oceans rise, the only thing
I know how to do is tend my garden, turn over the dirt
in even rows, drill in the seed, pat it down,
let the spade sink into gravelly ground.

6. IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO PLANT CHANGE?

Is it impossible to plant change?

7. APRIL

[April slips on her green silk dress]
a soft lilac shawl across her arms,
and dances to the small fine music of the rain.
I was away for a week, writing, happy to be alone
and working again, but then home began to tug
at me, the way the earth pulls the rain
down to meet it. And I love the road,
the journey, the whole difficult trip of it,
the long slow uphill climbs, the unexpected
bends, the side roads, the false starts,
every wrong turning. Dogwoods fill the woods
with their white light, kid gloves worn at a ball.
I’m going down the road, singing the radio.
And my heart is as green as the rain.

8. MAY

How many times
have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines
through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves
as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree
that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow:
cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings,
and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up,
so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers,
Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the
whole world sings, gleams.

9. JUNE

It is one of those soft
summer nights, after a day of bake oven heat,
the air playing with the hair on your neck,
the bare skin of your arms and legs.
In the grass, fireflies rise in their sultry dance,
little love notes that flicker, that burn.

10. HAPPINESS

And I love this ordinary summer afternoon,
sitting under my cherry tree full of overripe fruit,
too much for us to pick, an abbondanza of a tree,
I love this dark grey catbird singing its awkward song,
and the charcoal clouds promising rain they don’t deliver.
I love the poem I’ve been trying to write for months,
but can’t; I love the way it’s going nowhere at all.
I love the dried grass that crackles when you walk on it,
leached of color, its own kind of fire.
Way off in the hedgerow, the musical olio of dozens of birds,
each singing its own song, each beating its own measure.
This is all there is: the red cherries, the green leaves,
sky like a pale silk dress, and the rise and fall
of the sweet breeze. Sometimes, just what you have
manages to be enough.

11. HOW CAN WE LET IT ALL SLIP THROUGH OUR FINGERS?

How can we let it all slip through our fingers?

12. JULY

It’s still summer, and the breeze is full
of sweetness spilled from a million petals;
it wraps around your arms, lifts the hair
from the back of your neck.
The salvia, coreopsis, roses
have set the borders on fire,
and the peaches waiting to be picked
are heavy with juice. We are still ripening
into our bodies, still in the act of becoming.

13. WE GIVE WHAT WE CAN

We give what we can,
but not so much it hurts.

14. AUGUST

Summer sings its long song, and all the notes are green.
But there’s a click, somewhere in the middle
of the month, as we reach the turning point, the apex,
a Ferris wheel, cars tipping and tilting over the top,
and we see September up ahead, school and schedules
returning. And there’s the first night you step outside
and hear the katydids arguing, six more weeks
to frost, and you know you can make it through to fall.
Dark now at eight, nights finally cooling off for sleep,
no more twisting in damp sheets, hearing mosquitoes’
thirsty whines. Lakes of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace
mirror the sky’s high cirrus. Evenings grow chilly,
time for old sweaters and sweatpants, lying in the hammock
squinting to read in the quick-coming dusk.
A few fireflies punctuate the night’s black text,
and the moonlight is so thick, you could swim in it
until you reach the other side.

15. O SEPTEMBER

O September!
When the rest of the garden
dwindles to meager,
when the trees begin
their strip to the bones,
you come to fruit
bearing rubies on your canes,
and we’re on our knees,
stained in crimson,
our garnet fingers
praising the earth.

16. SOME OCTOBER

Some October, when the leaves turn gold, ask
me if I’ve done enough to deserve this life
I’ve been given. A pile of sorrows, yes, but joy
enough to unbalance the equation.

When the sky turns blue as the robes of heaven,
ask me if I’ve made a difference.
The road winds through the copper-colored woods;
no one sees around the bend.

Today, the wind poured out of Canada,
a river in flood, bringing down the brilliant leaves,
broken sticks and twigs, deserted nests.
Go where the current takes you.

Some twilight, when the clouds stream in from the west
like the breath of God, ask me again.

17. HOW CAN WE BELIEVE THESE DAYS WILL END

How can we believe these days will end,
that cold winds will blow, that snow will fall?

18. THIS BLUE MORNING

[It’s Monday morning]
mid-November, the world turned golden,
preserved in amber. I should be doing more
to save the planet—plant a tree, raise
a turbine, put solar panels on the roof
to grab the sun and bring it inside. Instead,
I’m sitting here scribbling, sitting on a wrought
iron chair, the air cold from last night’s frost,
the thin sunlight sinking into the ruined
Appalachians of my spine. I know it’s all
about to fall apart; the signs are everywhere.
But on this blue morning, the air bristling
with crickets and birdsong, I do the only thing
I can: put one word in front of the other,
and see what happens when they rub up against
each other. It might become something
that will burst into flame.

19. LIGHT OF LATE NOVEMBER

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there’s left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn’t cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it’s all we have, and it’s never enough.

20. WINTER WILL RETURN

Winter will return.
Will we see another spring?

21. DECEMBER LIGHT

In this icy light, the ghostly fronds
of ice ferns cover the glass,
as the sky descends,
erasing first the far blue hills,
the cornfield hatchmarked with stubble,
coming to our street—
the sky flinging itself
down to the ground.

These winter nights
are never black and dense,
but white, starlight
dancing off the land.
And then the luminous dawns,
the pearled skies full of hope
no matter what else we know.

22. THE LIGHT GIVES UP TOO EARLY

The light gives up too early.
We light candles in the coming dark.

POSTLUDE

Is it impossible to plant change?
Let us believe in the resurrection of the earth.
Look, how the light is beginning to dim.
There’s so much to love in this undoing.
I will not be silent.

—Barbara Crooker