March Comes Again

Would you believe, Ostara, what a bad disciple I am?

But you know.  Between the hot turn and the cold, I not only forget you entirely, I cease to believe.

Because who, at any other time, could believe such things?  That in a moment the world would slant, and rise, and expand, and sing, and a body could do nothing but retie her shoes and follow you as far as feet can go?

In such a mundane moment as that, in the mundanest of human times, as I thought my mundane thoughts.  How many days can I survive waking with eyes already fatigued, and how many times can my recycling bin conceivably be damaged, and how is it possible for USPS to deliver a package not only to a wrong apartment number but entirely disparate street name?

There I was, staring at that Amazon package with loathing for the entire overdeveloped enterprise of this world, and then there was you.  In an instant, as I want in search of Edward in apartment D3 on a disparate street name entirely to deliver his Amazon package, there was you.  And I ask, who could believe such things on a December night — who could?

I did know you were there, beyond the city limits, past the interstate roar, away from the gas station lights.  But I did not believe.  I did not believe you would find me where I am, a woman with tired eyes in a little apartment not far from the train tracks, adjacent to the constantly barking dog, between one small yard and the wholly unpleasant woman in unit 2.

I didn’t even believe you remembered my name, I of little faith. 

How do you do that in an instant, Ostara?  Burst forth everywhere until even the rows of electric meters and stains on the pavement and telephone wires seem to be trembling at the touch of you?  And what the precise combination of duskier pink on the horizon line and new pollens curdling the air and swelling tree branches does arrive at that perfect intoxication, and how many millions of lives were conceived in just this air, so my flesh would become animal again tonight and say this is the one I know, this the one I want?

It is enough to see you pass by; it is enough for another year.  I know that I will never claim you.  You know that I cannot resist you.

Tonight I believe you anything.  So tell me the apps with perish and dragons roar; tell me the bombs will disintegrate and the children inherit the Earth; tell me there is a door and on other side of that door an end to chronic pain.  I will believe you doors. Tell me there is latch upon latch waiting to be lifted; tell me the good is eternal and none has been lost, not a drop, that will not be found again. 

I believe that life comes again.

Ostara, I believe, I believe, I believe.

Image from Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book by Christina Georgina Rossetti, 1893, via The British Library on flickr