April’s come and gone, we’re in the thick of May, and I’ll bet there are a lot of folks who don’t know we just missed National Poetry Month. It’s easy to get caught up in the change from chilly spring to the first tastes of summer, but doesn’t poetry have more in common with the changing of the seasons than we think? Doesn’t it provoke a change, a transformation inside of us?
I’m reminded of this Robert Louis Stevenson poem:
Here I wander in April
Cold, grey-headed; and still to my
Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;
Spring, flower-planter in meadows
S is for Spring, for new S Curves. But I want to take this month’s newsletter to remind you (and myself) that what might seem like the dramatic blooms of nature in springtime (at least here in the mid-Atlantic region) are actually imperceptible changes day-to-day.
The lengthening of a leaf and the opening of a new sprout are the tiny building blocks that accumulate day after day to bring us the beauty of spring’s transformation. We tend to notice the flowering meadow, not the germinating seed.
But they’re there, ticking away, and I think recognizing those S Curves makes our days that much brighter.
Even the solstices are the flourishes of a long S Curve. Right after the solstice, the daylight gets longer by just seconds per day. So even after three weeks, we’re only getting a minute more of daylight than we were in late December. The difference is almost imperceptible, but there are six more hours of daylight on the summer solstice than on the winter solstice, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
Small steps gain momentum until the rate of change is dramatic – slowing again as the cycle approaches completion. Nature’s arithmetic favors an S Curve. So, if you feel stuck, and your first instinct is to break free of that rut by jumping on a new S Curve – maybe you’re on one and just don’t see it yet.
Maybe there’s something small you do every day that’s changing you slowly, and you don’t realize it. A book you’ve been reading every day on the metro, chapter by chapter, methodically, to the point where it’s a habit you don’t notice. Slow down, and name what this S Curve means to you. Why have you stuck with it all this time? How has it changed you?
Like the berry bushes in our backyard, which I only noticed once they offered up their fruit, we are sometimes on quiet S Curves that simply require patience and time. But they deserve our respect and attention nonetheless, whether that’s on a freezing morning in early April or a warm evening in June.
I’ll leave you with one last excerpt of poetry, this time from Lisa Olstein:
June efforts quietly.
I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall
So even if spring continues to disappoint
We can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.
