‘Twixt Valentines and Spring

We hope you had a warm Valentine’s Day full of hugs, kisses and loves. Ours did and added too much candy to be good for us since we were just finishing off the Christmas stash. Time to start practicing self control again. Wish me luck!!

Over the past few days we’ve watched a flock of a baker’s dozen turkey hens scratch the daylights out of our back yard. Where there had been a couple of inches of snow cover, after the birds’ visits, oak leaves cover the ground. They no doubt found most of the acorns they were looking for or they’d still be scratching for them. Yesterday, as they trod downhill, they looked like a division of miniature tanks coming toward the house. By sometime next month, toms may start to gobble as mating season begins.

red osier dogwood brightening

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, we’re under an “Extreme Cold Watch” with wind chills from minus 33 to minus 39 forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday. By next weekend, daytime highs are forecast to reach above freezing. Remember the old saying “If winter’s here, can spring be far behind?” Let’s hope it’s right (behind)!! Meteorologically we’re now less than two weeks from the beginning of spring on March 1.

It’s about that time of year when red osier dogwood begins to brighten tamarack swamps. Soon we’ll be hearing the tinkles and tunks of snowmelt dripping and flowing as nature begins to climb out from under her winter blanket. Spring is a season the Minnesota does not usually do well. The pattern is too often cold, cold, cool, warm, hot, over about that many days. Maybe this year will be an exception to the usual and we’ll get to enjoy an extended, gradual warming over weeks to come. Maybe some year the Vikings will win the Superbowl, too. Lots of natural, and naturalized, Minnesotans have become quite good at saying “Wait ’til next year.”

Here in the North Country, by the time we leave Black History Month, we will be entering the

Country of Water

Mahogany L. Browne

I know who I am because I believe it

The breath in my chest
Insistent in its choice

The skin that I’m in
The bones and blood and veins
It carries like a promise

          Have you witnessed the ocean

Moving with so much gust and life
Have you witnessed the river
Still waters bubbling the rebirth of school

           Have you witnessed your body

Its own country of water
Moving against the tide of a world
So heartbreaking      it’s forgotten its own voice

Be still friend
Be still
Be kind to yourself in the gift of stillness

I know who I am because I believe it
I know
I know
Who I
Who I
Believe
Believe
Believe
In three’s we will come
A drip of water moving against a boulder
Water slow and steady can turn rock
Into a pebble
Like anxiety
Like self-doubt
Smaller
Smaller
Until gone
Let your love for yourself be the water
Be the rise
Be the mist
Let you be

I know who I am because I believe it
I believe I am my mother’s daughter
I believe I am my grandmother’s prayers
I believe I am my great-grandmother’s backbone revealed

I am I am because I believe so
I am because a woman believed in me
What a continent I became
What a country of water I be
I flow and fluid and rise and ebb and I believe in me

           I am not wrong
I am wronged

In this skin I’ve reclaimed
From this trap of this country’s tourniquet
Only to find the sweet solace is a river bed
Its mud beckons me closer to its silt
Small fish and forgotten glass unearth themselves
Like baby teeth
Only one can cut into flesh purposely
Only one does not know what it is capable of

I believe in the air as much as I believe in the fire
I believe in the fire as much as the water consumes
I believe in a higher source
Energetic and wise
I believe in my ability to thrive

This body
        This body is a good thing

Turning two miles walked over a bridge into a family’s meal
Creating poems that become cashier’s checks
Dentist bills and rent
I’ve three holes in my teeth
And a nation that pretends I didn’t almost die for it to survive

I am I am still here still here
I am still here and like the ocean, full of salt and shells
Full of ship remnants and noble ones
I bleed and the sand grieves
I be because someone survived for me to be here
Today

Breathing this almost air
Marching for cleaner belongings
My front seat beneath the deadening stars
Is still a seat
Is still a ground
Is still a home that I can pronounce my given name
To write amongst the forgotten names
The taken and the ignored
But today

            There are no tombstones

Today
There is no true death

Only life
Only life
Only a song of the living
Maybe even a belief system
With water as its minister

            I am water

I dive into my own currents
I dress my dreams in the satin breath
Of my ancestors

I know
I know
I know who I am
I know who I am because I believe it

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Please be kind to each other while you can.