Returning

 

Azalea in my front yard

Each year more precious,
the rebirth of Spring!
As if now, at my age, I have my doubts,
mired down in tasks and obligations,
living just day-to-day, sunrise to sunset.
But this! The joy of brand-new life,
a quickening in the brown Earth,
and in my soul.
The lilac is back,
each bud bursting into four-petalled sweetness.
Deep in the dry leaf mold,
bloodroot arises from the forest floor,
its sap vermillion, exploding with life energy
into unique white variegated wonder.
Dandelions resume their relentless growth
with a yowl!
Trillium emerges, complete,
ready to live a miracle of grace.
And I too burst forth.
Spring flowers gorgeously in my chest,
silencing my fears,
pulling me back, whee!
into my place in the wonder of living.


Annelinde Metzner
April 8, 2016

Trillium

Bloodroot

Chickweed

Baby jewelweed

Metaphor

 

 

 

It's a March day, not warm yet-
The chill breeze has me in sweaters still.
But in my little flower bed, life stirs!
Everywhere, daffodils burst forth,
nodding their heads in orange, yellow and white.
Among last year's dry leaves,
green pushes out, bold and confident.
Lenten roses, tulip buds,
peony stalks like voluptuous red asparagus.
Here and there, a primrose,
lemon balm, anise and mint.
The perfect shapes of bleeding hearts,
my Grandmother's favorite.
Delightful after winter's long inward turning,
each green being comes forth waving,
like a long-lost friend.
Is there a metaphor here?
Everything we've planted can be reborn. 

Annelinde Metzner

March 20,2024

 

 

Lenten rose

Bleeding Heart

Peony

The Egg

 

Pysanky eggs

The egg, elliptical, luminous, whole,
separate, indivisible, complete,
nexus of life, invisible, unspoken,
unnamable ancestral pearl of power,
chosen one: you are my pride, my treasure.
I nurture and guard you with all my life,
a green dragon whose jewel lies hidden
in the humming recesses of her dark-red cave.
I share you with the mammals, and the fish too,
the birds, amphibians, insects, snakes:
our common inheritance, our common being.
All of us, whether we fly or swim,
trot, slither or leap beyond our height,
we all love you the same, and commend you
with lifetimes of attention and lavished care.
There are others, too, ferns and firs,
and maybe fruits, too, our cousins
guarded within the muscled trunks
of our rooted green sisters who grow in the Earth.
There they pull from the black nutrition
the crystals of power, the amino molecules,
fuel from which you radiate light
in fruit, in flower, in ovule, in shell.
I feel you well, with every moon,
through thirteen moons in every year.
You arise and make yourself plain,
crown jewel in the parade of our homeland,
flowering, intoxicating, odoriferous, fecund,
temple priestess of life everlasting
in burgundy velvet, concealing and beckoning.
It is easy, and not easy, to court you, egg,
and find you whole, enthroned in all life,
at once at the center and imminent in all things.
It is easy, and yet to properly seek you,
one must have peace, and presence, and life,
abundant life, and love without question
that leaps into the future, many times ones own height.
I bought a dozen of you today,
to boil you and color you, an essence, a symbol,
a ritual item more real than words
and you’re everywhere, among baskets and bunnies,
colored and white, foam and fluff,
and children’s hands under the bushes.
It is Eostar, your long-ago day
when Russian mothers baked you into bread,
and Czech mothers painted you for hours,
and my own ancestors walked for miles
to gather you one by one from afar,
all of us looking to the reborn world,
the flyers, the creepers, the unfathomable sea-swimmers.
These eggs are ours, our hours, our years,
the perfect pearls of our lives.

Annelinde Metzner
March 19. 1989

       My German family had many deep memories of gathering and dying eggs at Easter.  In the Slavic countries there is an ancient tradition of Pysanka, engraving eggs with wax as protective charms for the house.  Read some fascinating history of pysanka here.