My Sunday Best 03

On brumation.

One who made it to the other side.

This week, the amphibians awoke. Several sopping wet days led to a mass exodus of frogs and toads from their winter bolt holes to breeding ponds. They were hopping into our dining room, leaping in front of the car and belching out love songs in the wee hours.

Then, we found an armada of newts beneath a boulder. The smooth newt is the only tailed amphibian in Ireland, and is rarely seen. We counted seven coiled like springs in the mud, stretching their small, cold bodies, waking up to February. I told them to take their time, there might be more wintering yet.

“Weep! Weep!” calls a toad from the water’s edge. And I do. If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Kimmerer’s book is one I return to often. It taught me so much about reciprocity, generosity and the need to drop articles (a/an/the) when referring to kindred animals as a sign of respect. Now, when I see hundreds of frogs hopping across a back road in Co. Sligo, I receive it as a gift. I pull my car into the ditch and provide safe passage to as many amphibians as I can before my kids yell at me to stop being so weird, muuuum.

Why?

Because if I believe that everything is connected in this complex, heartbreaking, beautiful world, then how I treat frog matters. This is part of what Kimmerer calls, ‘restoring honour to the way we live’ so when newt opens an eyelid to observe me, it sees me covering its family with logs and stones so it can slumber a while longer.

This Sunday, I offer you frog. He is clammy, suspicious and handsome. He’s been brumating all winter in your compost pile and the only thing that prevented him from freezing was the glucose in his vital organs acting as antifreeze. When you were eating Christmas dinner, he stopped breathing and his heart was not beating. If he were to disappear, our agriculture would suffer, there would be a huge knock on effect in the food chain and his essential role as environmental indicator would leave us exposed.

Today, however, he is thawed and ready for business. If you see him, say hello, consider the marvel of his survival and wish him well in his romantic endeavours.

Here is Mary Oliver, slipping into the water like frog, seeing the world through his eyes, realising that everything is everything else and we’re all in this together.

Happy Sunday…

Pink Moon - The Pond

You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do –
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won’t listen;
in the distance it is sparkling
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees –
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones –
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water –
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are someone else.
And that’s when it happens –
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that's when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It’s no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don’t fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a woman’s body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it beats in its cage of water,
as it turns like a lonely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
yes.