May is a verb.
The green blade riseth like a rapidly inflating bouncy castle. This year as I air my ivory white limbs for the first time it feels like we have weathered an especially long winter. And by we I mean all the things of our world: rapaciously filling our collective lungs with the deep, clear oxygen of a May in blooming frenzy. May is a verb and we are all invited to verb along with her.
Spring is easy work. Capillaries on breezy autopilot. The sap seems to chuckle as it rises in the trees, each bushy thing grows other bushes just for fun. The garden gardens. The birds carry binoculars.
This morning a slow worm crossed over the slate path to the studio. A bronze-silver treasure too beautiful to not call my daughter down to see. She rushed out but too late as it retreated into the geranium. My video was scant recompense for this glimpse of gold. But May gives and gives and gives. What’s next?
Snails drop from the doorframe above my head as I slide the studio open. Slugs are poised to enter. They too are charged with spirit. To paint? Why not. Great tits are colonising, magpies feast on the insect harvest of our garden. A crow lands like a 747 under the clematis. All of our possible blossoms have blossomed for this first time this year: The fire-scorched apple, youthful hawthorn and the outrageously dangerous-looking blackthorn that crept under the neighbour’s fence with a passport a few years back and has now earned permanent residency in our garden. The days are full of white and green, the nights are scented again.
Which is all to say I am in love with the change of seasons. Moving from one thing to the next is a simple reminder that there is something in the first place. A soft loss and gain repeated throughout every year as if to hammer this perfect lesson home. And yet how prone I am to forgetting. This perfect May has backdropped some hard times both out in the world and closer to home. Sometimes even the bubble-flow of a blackbird in full gargle can’t provide buoyancy for that sinking feeling. And although you might be expecting a neat pirouette right about now I don’t actually have a ready remedy for these Maytide blues. Just some trust that the seasons change and that each of us has the choice to stand still or verb along with them.