“I believe,” wrote the poet Robinson Jeffers, “that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole….”
Under the spell of middle spring, it is not so difficult to feel part of that one being, to sense that we express its energy and hope. Because this is the week of pale violets in the lawn and vast patches of dandelions along the roadsides.
Serviceberry and red-flowered quince and star magnolia and decorative pears, crabapples, peach trees, ash, sugar maples and plums send out blossoms along the streets in town and in the countryside. Hyacinths and pushkinias and windflowers, early tulips and middle daffodils and bleeding hearts bloom in the garden. Swamp buttercups and cowslip and toad trillium and Jacob’s ladder join the earliest woodland wildflowers, the hepatic and twinleaf and violet cress.
And humans are not separate from such a landscape. And what if the universe really might be one being, and we are part of a universal whole? What can anyone do with such an idea?
Robinson Jeffers answers: “I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one’s own life and environment beautiful, so far as one’s power reaches.”
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of middle spring. In the meantime, imitate spring. So far as your power reaches, make beauty in your life and space.
