Spring's Promise: The Emotional Power of Seasonal Change

Looking to the light. Artwork; poetry; sights and sounds from a walk

Welcome to this week’s letter from the moss.

I spend a lot of time looking for magic—beauty, colour, light—but I realized as I sent out Shining Through: Embracing Light During Dark Times that there has to be somewhere to park the darkness, to offload the imbibed shadows of the breaking news, the chaos of our supposedly civilised world.

This is it.

I have decided to deposit the darkness on paper in a series of graphite sketches.

“Shouldn’t have started it.”

There is nothing like a good scribble to vent emotion.

In the evening, I read a little of Mark Doty¹

The best descriptions acknowledge the dual nature of the world, the shading that exists at the edge of any brightness, the joke waiting in mortality’s dimmest clutch.

Karma?

I find some lines, written at the time of Start Small: How Tiny Nature Grows Hope. I forget the prompt, but they seem to fit:

Overlook

Into the dark soul of the world above
needles spill,
looping threads run
until caught, frozen

Softly
peeling skin

Sunday.

High pressure brings hope. A settled spell of weather, clear and calm. Cold nights, early frost, but the sun carries a promise of Spring.

Gravity inevitably affects us all.

Even the sky, vast and unreachable,
falls;

collects
on the ground in
pools of cerulean

Wednesday.

Come for a walk. I hadn’t planned this, but then I heard the thrush singing from the top of the fir.

Anyway, it’s too nice to be inside.

The sights and sounds of a walk, and observations around my photographs. I thought about transcribing my words, but I decided to let you listen instead.

I’ve postponed my usual voiceover—apologies—but my heart is troubled by looking after a poorly cat, and not yet knowing the problem. Another trip to the vet beckons.

Thank you for being here and for your kind words in response to my writing.

Until next week,

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All words and images are copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted

1. ‘The Art of Description: World Into Word’ by Mark Doty. Thank you Margaret for leading me to this.