BLACKBERRY, DOGWOOD WINTER

"You can count on blackberry winters to make the berries good," a Tennessee native told me recently. Well, the berries should be good this year, for since my return to Sewanee, TN, we have experienced either a blackberry winter or a dogwood winter. Both plants survived well in the midst of unexpected "cold snaps," as we call them in New Iberia. Temps have dipped into the 40's, and most natives, who have shucked off their winter woolies, are still wearing jackets and warm socks these chilly mornings.

I love to see the dogwoods flowering and the butterflies and moths visiting the two trees in my yard, despite the winter-like cold. I don't know who would cut down these beauties, but I've read that dogwood is often used for cutting boards, golf clubs, tool handles, and mountain dulcimers. Blasphemy!

 "Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems," the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote. And every morning, I tune in to the weather channel, hoping that the almanac predictions of more cold for May 9, 10, and 11 will not come about while I chant "Spring has returned." It's time for fireflies to emerge, for the chigger season to begin, and for seasonal allergies to kick in. Lil Pulitzer says that despite the forecasts, we should "live like its spring."

So, I went down to the Valley to purchase herb seedlings and plants for the small bed in our backyard. Dianthus, mint, rosemary, yarrow, and sage weathered the bitter cold of a hard winter here, and the Dianthus plants bloom apace. I planted more Dianthus, sage, rosemary, tarragon, and oregano. However, on the heels of the cold temps, heavy rain fell on my new plantings, and I pray that they will withstand the rain and the possibility of more dogwood winter weather in May.

My good friend Brenda Lowry of New Iberia, Louisiana, who writes, sings, and records music, sent me copies of Psalms for the 21st Century she's presently composing, and I think that one entitled "Rise" belongs in this rhapsodizing about spring. The Psalm writing is a new venture for Brenda, who was recently on the road with Bubba Murrell, performing "Women at the Well," a collection of songs for which they wrote both lyrics and music to honor my ordination as a deacon sixteen years ago. Their road tour took them as far afield as Baltimore, Maryland where they performed at Episcopal and Unity churches before spring arrived.

Here are excerpts from Brenda's Psalm entitled "Rise:"

Rise up, oh life, from ashes thought to be dust
turned into newness as the seasons turn.
Drawn within the darkness, silent sleep
recreated from the essence of before...

Breaking out and breaking through as does a seed
or a winged creature from cocoon
whatever was before is forever changed;
disillusion washed away in renewal...

Rise again, oh Joy, rise again!
Greet the dawn with anticipation
for in the fullness of all that is all
rise, new life, and fill the world anew.
Antiphon.: Rise anew, and bring new hope into the world.

THOUGHTS ON A SNOWY MORNING

Pink dogwood

During Morning Prayer at St. Mary's Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee this morning, I looked out the window and saw snow falling on the valiant, blooming redbuds and dogwoods which had just come into their own. It's Holy Week, and a "dogwood winter" has descended on The Mountain, with below freezing temperatures predicted for tonight. Carol, who cooks for the Convent, assured us that the snow is just passing through, and by the end of the Eucharist, the sky had cleared of snow... and now an icy rain is falling.

I love the way the snow looks on the trunks of the myriad dogwoods scattered throughout Sewanee, but we had no warning that a dogwood winter would assail us. Sunday afternoon we went down to Chattanooga, which seethed with 82-degree weather (well, that's hot here in middle Tennessee!) and spent the afternoon strolling around the Bluff View Art District, known not only for its visionary arts, but for its culinary art as well. The District sits atop a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River and is our favorite area in Chattanooga.

After lunching at Tony's Italian Restaurant, we meandered through the River Gallery and the Huntington Museum where regional and national artists are featured, but we were drawn outdoors to take photographs of the pink dogwoods and of other foliage in the little alleyways that wind behind the River Gallery. We paused before a dogwood near the Rembrandt Restaurant where we sometimes eat European style pastries and drink Expresso coffee outdoors under bright umbrellas. I've written a few poems about the birds that flock to the outdoor tables while we're eating, and I always notice people scribbling on pads as they sit in the sun enjoying the European ambiance of the place. I imagine them as fellow poets who're writing about the "light that exists in spring/not present on the year" (in the words of Miss Emily Dickinson) and have scratched similar lines on napkins while sitting at a Rembrandt table. 'S hard to resist doing something artistic in this setting!

Gelsemium vine

We found it difficult to leave the city on such a sunlit day, so we prolonged our visit by going down to the Whole Foods Market where we discovered organic and local produce, grass-fed meat, and an opening sale of spring flowers. The large display of orchids in this wonderful marketplace prompted us to buy a tall, deep purple one to deliver as an Easter gift for a shut-in friend at Sewanee.

The Sunday afternoons of my childhood were always times that I labeled "inertia," as they were devoted to adult naptimes or, in the case of visits to my hardshell Baptist grandmother, they were periods when we observed the Sabbath by avoiding any kind of happy activity that might be regarded as disrespectful of the day — solemnity, quietude and utter boredom prevailed! Now, when sunny spring weather beckons, I'm likely to indulge the "play impulse" and my ubiquitous wanderlust on Sunday afternoons, and Chattanooga always satisfies both tendencies.

However, snow is falling again, and on a more serious note, here's a poem I wrote about a dogwood winter occurrence. It's from my book, The Holy Present and Farda:

THE HOLY PRESENT

God does not wear a heavy cloak

concealing his illuminations,

he is in the world, a shaft of light

cutting through our fatal talk

of dark and cumbersome sin.

He brings the faint violet to radiance,

an almost forgotten smallness

growing in the graveyard,

starlings scattering in the trees,

people walking among gray tombstones,

chatting briefly of one history or another,

talking about each infidelity,

about how God is with the dead now

in the other world, behind the curtain...

But he has never worn a long cloak

hiding his illuminations,

daffodil, vines overcome quiet graves

knowing he is here, gracious light

watching his own silent handiwork...

snow falling on the mountain,

now, here, now.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

WEATHER MATTERS…

If you’re sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, the wait becomes more bearable when strangers strike up a conversation with you. If you live in a small town in Tennessee, you’re more likely to get into some serious talking in a doctor’s office than you would if you lived in a large city in the East. Last week, I scheduled three lab tests on three different days in Monteagle, Tennessee and spent a lot of my week sitting on uncomfortable chairs waiting for my name to be called so I could undergo what I call “Dachau experiments.” However, I was entertained in several waiting rooms by native Tennesseans talking about their favorite subject: the weather.

In one doctor’s office, I had just settled in my chair when a woman asked me if I spelled my name with one “n” or two. She had heard the nurse call my name and figured out an entrée into a parley with me. She was a naturally garrulous woman, probably in her early 70’s, who had a list of ailments and troubles as long as one of my sermons, but she delivered them cheerfully, then turned to the subject of weather.

Blackberry flowers

“We’re fixing to have a blackberry winter,” she said. “The blackberry bushes in my backyard are blooming.”

“Never heard of it,” I told her. “Seems like we’ve had enough winter up here already.”

“It’s a cold snap that happens in late spring when blackberries are blooming,” she said. “But you got to be careful if you go blackberry picking because the snakes is out. I seen four king snakes and two copperheads already.”

“Then you won’t see me doing any picking,” I told her. “We just call blackberry winters ‘freak cold snaps’ back home in Louisiana. “The weather there is pretty hospitable right now – it’s summer in Cajun country.”

“Well, up here we have blackberry winters, locust winters, redbud winters, and dogwood winters. Old folks didn’t have calendars like we do and they just relied on nature to tell them things. We had a dogwood winter in early May last winter, right about the time the dogwood started blooming. Farmers know it isn’t a good idea to plant until after those dogwoods bloom.”

Dogwood flowers

“Never heard of any of these winters. Of course, we only have about two months of real winter down where I live – December and January. Maybe February.”

“We got another name for a cold spell in the spring,” she interrupted. “It’s called Linsey-Woolsey Britches Winter – it means that when the cold spell finishes, you can put away your long johns ” (as if I wore them).

I forgot about this conversation until I checked the temperature gauge on the front porch yesterday morning and saw that temps had dipped to 59 degrees. The high for the day was 67 degrees. When I checked the weather report online, I read that the low temperature predicted for last night was 46 degrees, and when I got up 7 a.m., the temp was 56 degrees!  These temps couldn’t be called wintry, but the weather is certainly brisk this morning. My new friend had been right on the money!

I didn’t tell this new friend that two months ago I wrote a poem entitled “Too Much Gray in the Day,” a wry bit of verse about returning to the gray weather of Sewanee in still-cold March. She seemed fairly acclimated to the somber winters here on The Mountain and even welcomed a blackberry winter.

The poem will be published in a new book of poetry I’m working on during this blackberry winter:

TOO MUCH GRAY IN THE DAY

Seventy years passed

before I figured out weather matters.

I had to move away from humid air

caught in the branches of old oaks

overhanging rusty bayou water,

climb 2,000 feet to find another home

where the dry air of the Cumberland

and ice in March

convinced me weather matters

in the sum mood of things;

a perpetual gray mist

can stupefy, cause you to slip

backwards into a metaphysical trance,

court oblivion or to consider

the end of the world,

hurl yourself over a barren cliff;

fall into the chasm of depression

just because the snow won’t melt,

and the March sun is white light;

the energy you thought was stored up

for a long winter’s day

is topped out, disappeared into

an eternity of wind,

telephone wires humming with frost,

snow in the bird bath.

I put on socks, turn up the volume

of Mozart’s Sonatas in A and D,

hoping the musical vibrations,

even at low volume,

will cause a seasonal change,

make the thermometer rise.

Using a long wooden spoon

I stir a pot of lentil soup,

making a grandmother kitchen,

steaming up the double glass windows,

consider calling everyone I know

back home on the bayou

where a south wind

blows over the slow-moving stream,

a perfect arrangement of essential warmth,

good to think about

when you’re too far from the equator,

too old to consider ice skating

or a cruise to Alaska,

or to appreciate the melancholy clouds

drifting across the wintry sun…

a bristling wolf pacing outside.