Easter Sunday

March 23, 2008

Easter Sunday. Cool and clear. The white sunbursts of bloodroot.

It’s a shame Easter can be such an ordeal for a singer, and not the kind of ordeal out which come compassion and revelation. Still, all in all, the season has done well for me. I was not too exhausted, not too fed up; the energy with which I start a new week is high, and through the blur of words and sounds came a few concepts, a few images which may be useful or comforting to me in time to come. My head bubbles with writing projects, and I see no reason why most of them can’t come to some fruition. I painted well in the hour I seized for it yesterday. I filled out the forms for Frank’s opera fellowship. I will get to school tomorrow in time to do something about the backlog there. Plainchant filters from the speakers in the living room. Circe is investigating photos taped to the bookcase. Maud dozes with one paw on the keyboard, where she must be able to feel every keystroke. Except for a little thread of melancholy–by no means unpleasant–which I put down to the sudden granting of long-looked-for solitude, it could be a perfect evening.

I know I react savagely and without patience to the dark patches of the mystery of life. I know I call you unloving names in those bitter moments after lying down and the backwash of bitter days comes upon me. I know we have been at war so long I only half remember a time before the war. I have prayed to break your heart, as you have broken mine. But I was up in the dark of the morning, a tiny bird-like thing beating its wings under the cold dome, waiting. I saw you coming at the rim of the world. I saw you stand there in the dazzle of the morning, bewildered as one must be after such a night. I cried out. I beat my little wings and cried out. I was the first. Perhaps you heard me, knew me. Perhaps by that cry you found your way.