Spring is Here and so am I

I've discovered some poetry by Theodore Roethke. I like skimming a poem first and noticing the lines that jump off the page:

"I dream of journeys repeatedly"
"I learned not to fear infinity"
"What I love is near at hand
always in earth and air"
"I learn by going where I have to go"

Tomorrow-I'm going with a couple friends to camp and rock climb and then there'll be a week in Thunder Bay visiting a dear old friend. It is difficult to believe that the school year is over, that the hum of activity last weekend is now covered in quiet restfulness. There will be one more month here for me and then I'll be shooting off into another chapter. I want the month of May to be a Monastic month. My roommate will be in England, the campus is empty, and aside from work I don't have too many obligations elsewhere. So I'm putting this out into the universe, "Monastic Month of May!"

It will be a sort of retreat, a reflective time-and how good it is to do this in Otterburne where I've spent the last five years. How good to use that time to say good-bye to it all. And to enjoy its fields and its trees while I can; to read the Lonely Planet guide to India, to plan my trip, to write, to "imagine! imagine!" and then to go out and do.

"One day you finally knew what to do, and began."
-Mary Oliver



In the meantime I will say how much I've loved Prov...This is what I've loved:

-the color of twilight when all the snow is blue
-the recital hall where sits a shiny black piano
-the walks down long gravel roads with friends
-walks on the frozen river
-playing guitar outside in a thunder storm
-tea and wine and wine and tea and coffee and a good chat and a good book and a good friend
-the fireflies, the stars, the nighttime owl that swoops down suddenly with big white wings
-finding inventive ways to climb onto the roof

Here's to closing one chapter, and beginning another! Cheers.