When I first moved to Seattle, my freshman year in college, I didn’t believe in seasonal affected disorder. I had lived through eleven Russian winters. Seasons seemed natural and expected, part of a rhythm that I never questioned. I have to admit that my relationship to the seasons has become more complicated since then. I have been waking up to their subconscious effect on me and I have been angry at my sense of a loss of control.
I have to admit that this winter has been a long one for me. Five years of living in the Pacific Northwest and the clouds are so heavy. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to run a half-marathon which means I have been getting up three times a week in the dark to make enough time to run before work. This has led to my obsessive checking of the sunrise/sunset calendars online, to my careful calculating of when it will be light.
And the light is coming slowly. I watch it progress across the sky now, and I am grateful because I have been waiting, anticipating, willing it to being. So, for this theme of spring and awakening I thought this poem would be best:
inhabiting the dark and filling
it with only the pounding of my feet
like i am knocking
at the door of the world and waiting
to be let in.
Always moving and subtly guarding
the Blue Heron, those two women
making breakfast and preparing coffee
I am blessing their doorways
passing as the angel of death
or the star of the morning.
I will summon the sun
bring it to rising
with my heart poundings
that is prayer, truly
as my breath speaks for each sleeper
I am weaving
I am bringing
another day into being.