As the forces of light prevail

The patches of snow-free ground on the south-facing slope behind the house are once again growing. Although both the Sunrise river and the pond north of the property are once again frozen over, the channels where recently there was open water are obvious and should return soon, perhaps this week. All this is in accord with the arrival tomorrow of this year’s Spring Equinox. Tomorrow, briefly, darkness and light will be in balance and then light will dominate until the Autumnal Equinox when the forces of light slide beneath the dark side.

someday soon, Grasshopper, someday soon

Photo by J. Harrington

Joni Mitchell has captured this, and more, in her beautiful lyrics to the chorus of The Circle Game:

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We're captive on the carousel of time 
We can't return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

We can’t change the past but each moment of now influences the futures we are co-creating with our fellow inhabitants of Earth. (If our feet were bigger, I’d write our fellow inhobbitants.) Can you tell that incipient Spring has improved my winter-dark mood? In fact, my mood has improved enough that it’s helped me to remember a great piece of advice someone gave me almost four decades ago. A fellow I knew back then told me to “Make it be a good day, whether it wants to or not!” That slipped my mind during the past COVID-sullied years that followed a Trump-sullied period that’s an embarrassment in our country’s history.

The voters have been too susceptible to the forces of darkness and have become unbalanced in their emphasis on individual success at the expense of family, neighborhood, community and country success. Paul Wellstone phrased it wonderfully years ago when he told us that “We all do better when we all do better.” None of us is raised in isolation nor in the woods like Romulus and Remus. For that matter, wolves don’t live in a dog eat dog world. Since this seems to be a day for me to throw around pithy observations, let me close out this last full day of winter 2023’s posting with another one that is relevant to the former orange-skinned, blown-blond-haired occupant of the White House: “No one is totally useless who can at least serve as a bad example.” 

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.