Sap Rises

Bacchus gets a bad rap.  The god of fermentation inspired so much frenzy that the word "bacchanal" is now a direct substitute for "drunken frenzy." Being more-or-less a teetotaler, I object. Bacchus, a.k.a Dionysus, was also the god of growth, of life force rising up through plants. This time of year, sap rises by a miracle of reverse osmosis, a gravity-defying feat performed, in the case of deciduous woody plants, without leaves.  

Herbaceous perennials are breaking dormancy.

The early flowering trees are breaking bud.  

The earliest flowers are breaking into a landscape of brown, like these little reticulated iris called "Harmony."

And ideas are breaking into my mind for new work, new words and new gardening projects.

Emily Dickinson must have felt it too.  In April, 1862 she sent a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, with enclosing four unsolicited poems as a sample of her work. It was a cold call, the hardest way to have your work evaluated. I wish I could capture Higginson's thoughts as he read the opening of her letter.  "Mr Higginson, Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?"

Here is one of the poems she included:

I'll tell you how the Sun rose -

A Ribbon at a time -

The Steeples swam in Amethyst -

The news like squirrels ran -

The hills untied their Bonnets -

The Bobolinks - begun -

Then I said softly to myself -

"That must have been the Sun."!

But how he set - I know not -

There seemed a purple stile

Which little Yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while -

Till when they reached the other side - 

A Dominie in Gray -

Put gently up the evening Bars -

And led the flock away -

Thanks to Vicki Lane, Emily Dickinson and Bacchus for inspiring this post.