April Showers bring May Flowers

Phil Burpee

Phil Burpee, Columnist, Pincher Creek Voice

My Dad always loved this little ditty here, and for some reason which required no explanation, it always came in a Bronx accent:

"Spring is sprung, da grass is riz 

I wonder where da boidies iz?

Da boids, dey say, iz on de wing -
but dat's absoid!I always tot da wing was on da boid!"

Oh, how I loved that. I would want to hear it again and again as the snowbanks melted and the first flecks of green showed up amongst the flattened duns of Winter. For Spring was a time of great excitement and wonder. And this familiar verse was indeed enough delightfully 'absoid' that it provided just the right hint of spice to heighten an already intensely-flavoured seasonal experience. Plus it offered a glimpse of how the language that I was still wrapping my child's brain around could come in intriguingly different ways - instead of just saying 'flying', you could say 'on the wing', which made a wondrous thing somehow poetically wondrous too. Poetry and the absurd - two doorways into the world that lies behind the world. It was all about getting my eyes wide open to see as much as I could see. It wasn't enough that the water was merely running in the ditch - it was running right down to the creek - and the creek was running down to the river - and the river was running all the way down to the ocean! My skull felt too little to hold it all.

Or sometimes he'd give me a hand with something and I'd say 'Thanks, Dad', to which he'd reply - "You're as welcome as the flowers in Spring, tra-la." - no kidding. And truly, what more profoundly welcoming spectacle could there be than these technicolor splashes of life rising up out of the recently frozen ground? For here is the sleep that waketh with the warming days. You know how it is - that first time you step out onto the back porch and the Sun suddenly seems to have got its power back, and you stretch back your arms and feel your bones creak and pop and you lungs fill with the first blessed full breath you've sucked in since about Thanksgiving time. And hey! - you've made it through another one, and maybe there's hope yet. "Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter........."

I have long been aware of the great power of Spring amongst elder folk. They are acutely aware of the renewed gift of life. I've known many a failing old timer for whom, just as the prospect of breathing their last in the dark of night before the dawning of the new day is unconscionable, so likewise is the surrender of their days before the dying of Winter. Many have I seen who budget their diminishing energies through the dark days so that they might hear one more time the Bluebird's call, and see the bee-filled catkins on the maple tree outside the window. Just as toques and hoodies give over to Easter bonnets, so do spirits lift on the rising songs of the World. Seeing that Life is renewed, it seems somehow less difficult, though no less poignant, to relinquish one's own. Into the arms of the Fairy Queen...............sela.

These are busy times. We are busy creatures. It can be hard to take a minute and smell the proverbial coffee. It smells pretty goddamn good. So does the moist earth. So does the approaching rain. So does the last bit of hay I feed out to the cows, even as the grass jumps up like it was spring-coiled - which indeed it is - coiled in the great tensile muscle of the all-enveloping biology that surrounds, supports and enfolds us. Being modern people, and thus rather inclined to think we know pretty much everything worth knowing, we tend to overlook the fundamental in favour of the superficial. The superficial is less challenging to consider, plus it allows us to regard our doings with a certain prideful near-sightedness - or perhaps just selective vision. From our house I can see several hundred wind turbines splashed across the ancient horizons of southern Alberta. Their red flashing lights rip the splendour of the night in sharp, robotic pulses. Huge, abominable transmission towers lurch up off the ground like giant Transformers, frozen in their tracks as they morph from their scattered bones into hulking monstrosities strung with the buzzing tethers of our AC/DC-devouring civilization. I am comforted to know that the skyscrapers and mega-mall parking lots of Calgary can keep their lights on all night thanks to the ridiculous mess that we choose to call 'environmentally-friendly energy production'. Making electricity from wind is a beautiful thing - leave it to us to find a way to turn the magical into the tawdry.

"Men have become the tools of their tools." So observed the great American contemplative and observer of the mysteries of the world, Henry David Thoreau. And these words were spoken in the early nineteenth century, long before the advent of the Lexus, the smart phone and the Airbus 380. If we have not entirely become slaves to our gadgets and our vehicles and our self-absorption, then we have certainly become voyeurs before the banquet of Life that swirls around us, mere observers, drinks in hand, at the greatest party that the Universe has so far ever thrown - that ongoing celebration known as planet Earth. It's too bad that we seem to be losing our grip of it all. It's a helluva show. The first moss-flox blooms have just peeked out. Buffalo beans are busting out of the dirt. Wild onion spears are thrusting up everywhere you look. The Great Horned Owl nest up in the spruce tree has a comical ookpik peering out of it. The Red Tails have just refurbished their condo down in the green ash in the coulee. Yellow Bells will be here soon - as will the Shooting Stars and the Three-flowered Avens and the Kingbirds and the Bluebirds and the Tree Swallows. We humans are of no consequence to these beings, except inasmuch as we compromise their ability to live their lives through the thoughtlessness and intransigence of ours.

Over by the haystack the old NH 1033 Stack Wagon sits with its rear-end facing the west wind. If you're anywhere within a hundred yards of it when the wind is blowing, there is the most beguiling sound. The underside of the stacker tines are sitting up vertically. There are little slits running down the undersides of them. And I’m telling you - they are perfect flutes. Long strings of random melody burble away from the otherwise incongruous tangle of metal and hydraulic lines that make up this machine. It sounds like some Byzantine bazaar, with snake-charmers and dancing girls and pennants flying in the desert wind. I think this is what is meant by the word caprice - sublime beauty manifesting from the mundane. For who would suppose that a piece of farm machinery might be the source of a music reminiscent of the Lark or the Pipit, cascades of ethereal sound washing around the sky like the very trickles of the melting snow setting out on their journey to the sea?

Whenever I get to feeling a bit too self-serious, I go see the donkeys. I step into the paddock and over they trot on their little donkey pins. You can't look at a donkey and still believe that there isn't a sense of humour out there somewhere in the silent void. Because the message comes in loud and clear when that old Jack opens his mouth to make comment - HAR HAR HEE HAR HAR HEE HAR. He thinks I'm about as funny-looking as funny can be - laughs so hard he just about can't catch his breath sometimes. And I suppose he's right. For what could be funnier than a man? - the only creature that roars and honks and spins his wheels - only to blow smoke and hit reverse, and end up exactly right back where he started.

That's why I am thankful for these April showers. They cleanse our world, wash our eyes. And without judgement, they bring us the bright symphony of those exquisite May flowers. The wheel rolls on. And the song is ever sung.

"......and I say - it's alright - do doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, do doo."

Phil Burpee

April 14, 2012