Spring Check-In: On Contentment, Gardens, Poetry, and Movement

A few things on the mind lately.

This morning, as the dog and I walked by the river, I was stunned and then overwhelmed at the return of so many new birds, all about the business of starting the day. Everywhere I looked was another and another and yet another! I tried to mark the ones I knew, welcoming them back, and catalog the ones I didn’t for research later. At one turn in the path, a wee bird, perhaps a warbler, flew out from behind a log and collided with my ankle. I yelped, and the bird sputtered around briefly before taking off for a nearby branch. Both of our well-being secured, I couldn’t help but laugh. The woods were so thick with birds that one flew into me!

Because I like to wrench meaning from most things, I took this as a reminder to tread softly and carefully when I walk through the homes of wild things.

A few other things on my mind:

1. Planning and preparing for a garden. Last year I tried to grow plants from seed but gave the process neither the time nor the diligence it demanded. None of the seedlings made it to the ground so this year I decided to go back to sourcing plants from greenhouses closer to planting time. What takes my attention now is planning well for what (and how much) to plant, figuring out how to prevent the animals from harvesting the bulk of the tomato crop again, and investing in more materials to expand our garden boxes. I follow almost anything that my friend Jessica, who is a garden whiz, recommends. Lucky for us, she started chronicling her garden adventures in a new substack, Seasons of Growth! I also love getting deep into Megan Gilger’s gardening/nature/outdoors content on her Through the Seasons substack, which was, of course, introduced to me by Jessica.

2. How to be content in any given season of life. I am fussing about a bit in my current season of life, often torn between an attempt at contentment and the sudden, almost daily desire to root out anything that doesn’t feel in alignment. I do not wish to be rash but I also feel ill at the thought of what might turn into settling. I am trying to find contentment’s place in the midst of those two pulls which requires a bit of a reframe on contentment itself. Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography series weighs on me as I consider all this in light of my life, my work, and my art.

3. Movement as medicine for the body and mind. My craving for movement spiked recently. I can’t seem to get enough no matter how much I walk, run, climb, hike, or do yoga. As soon as I stop, I want more. Participating in any movement was once fraught for me, as it is for so many: movement as punishment, movement as a way to “earn” certain foods, movement as a necessity for achieving a “desirable” body. I’ve been working on deconstructing my ideas around movement for the past few years and it feels unbelievably good to be in a season where movement feels nourishing and simple and fun. I’m processing the shift with lots of writing, which will possibly take the shape of a movement series here on Substack in the next few months.

4. The necessity of poetry for making sense of the living. I try to keep the walls of my inner life papered with poetry as much as possible. As April is National Poetry Month, I’ve been intentionally leaning into poetry more, both in my writing and reading. Tomorrow night Ada Limón, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, is coming to Milwaukee, and I’m beyond thrilled to sit in her presence and absorb her art more deeply. A new friend asked me recently who my favorite poets and poems are, and here are a few I shared: Ocean Vuong’s “Seventh Circle of Earth” and “What You Missed the Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade” by Brad Aaron Modlin and Margaret Atwood’s “All Bread”.

And then there is Anis Mojgani’s “Shake the Dust”—one of the first poems ever to take up permanent residence in my mind and linger and linger and linger. His performance of it is particularly captivating and something I have returned to over and over throughout the years. Every time I watch it, it chills and resets me. Words themselves may not change anything but I think they have immense power to bolster us to face the unbearable and plot a way forward through it.

That is all for now, back to sitting in the sun and basking in spring’s glory.