Day 960: Worm Moon

 

'everything is possible...'

Tonight is March's full moon, the worm moon (so called for the time when the ground begins to soften and earthworms appear  - in other words, the spring thaw.) And the overwhelming feeling of the month and its moon is one of possibility.

I've been waiting a long time to post this poem by Mary Oliver, one of my favourites of hers,  a homage to the hopeful season of spring.  (Taken from her collection on the year's moons 'Twelve Moons'.)

March is the month when spring finally begins to appear and possibility looms large, creating a jubilant effervescence  - 'In March the earth remembers its own name...and the name of every place is joyful'. I love how even the snow in the landscape of March is 'like a deep and lustrous blanket of moon-fire' in Mary Oliver's view.  This poem to me glows green with exuberant hope. Here's to March and the march onwards into spring where everything is indeed possible!

Worm Moon - Mary Oliver

1
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.

And the name of every place
is joyful.

2
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities

3
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
    over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.

4
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?

5
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,

6
and probably
everything
is possible.