Interruptions

Spring is making its way into central North Carolina, witness these daffodils in my flower garden.  Our winter here has been harsher and colder than normal, occasioning many interruptions to our plans and projects. The daffodils began to poke up more than a month ago, but snow, cold, sleet delayed their bloom. It reminded me of an ice storm back in 1988 when I lived in Saxapahaw.  How do we cope with such interruptions?

***

A VILLAGE THAT FELT LIKE HOME I.  January 2, 1988

These interruptions come: ice on the

twigs and branches or on the electric 

wires has caused a power outage.

The village, though it’s still light,

deals with darkness.  The houses

were not built to let in light, but

they can do without electricity.

The log in the woodstove still hums

and cracks, putting out heat, if not

light.  The gas range warms toast

and a tea-kettle.  The woodstove will

keep the tea warm.  At nightfall

there are candles, the flashlight,

and a kerosene lamp.  All strong

enough to read by, as is the daylight 

right beside the door, but I will use

this time to savor the moment any

interruption gives.

Perhaps life is just that:

interruption.  The divine interruption of

the gods, if we have the wits to see it

for what it is.

The interruption itself

gives us only a temporary dislocation,

a brief reminder of what we do and do not

have.  Then the lights return, and we

experience relief.  Creatures of routine

that we are, we welcome back the evidence

that things are back to normal.  The refrigerator

resumes its hum; the page of the book

is easy to see again.  The kerosene lamp

is now extraneous.  But something lingers

in the consciousness.  We almost feel like

turning out the light to recreate that

darkness we saw something else by.  The glow

from the wood fire was more potent then;

even the tea in its red kettle held more meaning.

To eat toast in the dusk of late afternoon,

to suspend the usual; to allow in the new,

the unprecedented thought, was pleasurable,

nourished our spirit some way we do not quite

understand now that we are back to the way

a book turned down at the place, a red teapot

sitting on a black woodstove, the next pine

log on the stove mat, and the sooty shovel handy

for rearranging an occasionally irrepressible

fire–have their ordinary look back.

Outside the trees are iced; twigs, pine 

fronds, the webbed juniper; individual grass

blades; the leaves of turnips and spinach;

stalks of green onion; wild privet bent

to the ground.

Everything is still ordinary;

still its same grey or green or brown self.

Except that down from the sky came ice,

and rain that iced what it touched.  Drops froze

under the eaves and coated the steps.  I took

the dog her food, and saw the grey-white look

the deeper woods have, and are likely to have

tomorrow when the light returns. Full light,

when it comes, will cause a radiance among

all those iced limbs.  An iridescent momentary

beauty.  Not quite natural; beyond routine; yet

given, inexplicably, when seen; or missed

because of the preoccupied condition of the mind

accustomed to things that stay put and are,

in some sense, known, or at least, familiar.

It is the unfamiliar I am learning to

have courage about; the moments not

easily shrugged off.  Another point of view

would call them epiphanies, find them 

sacred, even these dark ones, and even

when no place can be found for them

in a just order of things.

But I wonder

if the gods don’t laugh at us when,

time after time, they cause us a small but

significant interruption, and all we can

think about is getting the lights back on.

***

My new lasagna garden on top of raised beds, which Ana Maria and I worked on as weather permitted, now has carrot, beet, and sugar snap peas planted in it.  Let spring arrive for good!