What's Past is Prologue

Elizabeth I. Most people know her as Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. Most historians agree she was a complicated woman. Many people know she was highly educated and intelligent. Fewer people know she was a poet.

This woman eschewed much in the way of love. Here is her verse that I love best. It speaks to me.


I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

An Amazing Thing happened in my backyard...

In our unexpected two days of welcome warmth, an amazing thing happened.

I tried to capture it in words. The below falls far short, but, for what it's worth -


Cherry Blossoms

Hard winter aweigh
through unlikely feet of snow
to today
a sudden April warmth.

The ground coolly uncertain which green thing
might still reach its tender
head into the sun.

I sit quiet
at the peak of the afternoon warmth.
Quiet - so still - I harmonize in my mind
to my old dog's
sleeping musical breath.

and in the stillness
(me - stillness in the warmth) a sound -

tick -tick-

not rhythmic but cascading,
like a herd of tiny feasting birds
breaking seed with sharp beaks.

tick.

tick-tick.

Like the smallest of small rain on an aluminum roof,
no cadence but drifting on the air in little waterfalls of sound.

What could that be?

Without disturbing
the music of the old dog
I quietly pace the backyard,
behind the bushes,
along the feeders,
up the tree branches to see if
that grey squirrel might be
teasing me with his ventriloquy...

I sit back down and let the silence,
except for the tick tick tick,
engulf me.

And then, all senses roaming,
my ear turns to the cherry tree,
leaning toward me like a longing old love,

and I knew.

I knew.

That the ticking astounding sound was the music of a thousand cherry buds
releasing from their green and swollen cases.

A mystery, revealed.

Humbled,
I harmonize the music of the old dog
to the sound of the bursting tree,

and for the first time in a long time

I am

amazed.



April, 2009