Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly–and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”
– Omar Khayyám
March 1st is the beginning of meteorological spring. The three coldest months of the year are over and the next three are a transition between the cold of winter and the heat of the growing season, the three warmest months of June, July, August. Meteorological spring, though, is a creature of averages, a soulless thing with no music. I prefer the emergence of the bloodroot (in Minnesota) as the true first sign of spring.
On March 20th Imbolc will give way to Ostara, the Great Wheel’s spring season, on the day of the vernal equinox.
I do not yet know the traditional first signs of spring for the montane ecosystem, but I will. Nor do I know the tenor, the rhythms of the seasonal change here in the mountains. I look forward to learning them.
I’m reading the Thousand and One Nights again, a new translation, so right now Arabic and Persian stories, poetry fill my head. Khayyam’s Rubaiyat was my earliest introduction to Persian culture and one I found magical from the beginning.
There is, today, the slightest touch of spring longing in me. And so I wrote this.
