I'm so glad I left last year's Maypole up. It turns out a wrapped Maypole is quite stunning in the snow. It still stands in the middle of the garden, erect, last years bright colors faded slightly but not much. Red, yellow, pink, green, white, brown, checkered- all woven tightly to mark human activity in this cove. Are the lovely old depression era country songs of the Twilight Broadcasters, who kept the cadence of the May Dance, also woven in there? How about the smile of Eleanor Gentry (aka "Shorty"), whose old fabric we used for the ribbons? She spent the 40 best years of her life down there in the holler in the now dilapidated house where those fabrics were salvaged and then brought up the hill to be put to work. And the awe and fear of 3-year-old Sylvia Sparrow upon witnessing the Blue Man with antlers emerge from the woods and, silently, encircle the outer perimeter of the ring of dancers with his staff and his kilt, pawing the ground and snorting like a territorial buck?
What does the piliated woodpecker, watching from one of its MASSIVE holes in a nearby poplar tree in the woods, make of me standing in the snow pondering the pole? Will it watch from that hole this spring, as the friends, families, children and lovers wind new ribbons around a new pole? Or perhaps will it lose all sense of self control and fly right over the whole ordeal, laughing and cackling in polyrhythm with its undulating flight pattern?
The snow does not fool me. Spring is upon us.
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| Angelo beholds the pole |
3 comments:
oh love love love. the thing that worries me is your need to tell us the pole is still erect? do they generally go flaccid in your neck of the woods? anyway, the woodpecker bit was brilliant. really painted a picture of it all. perhaps he/she was thinking about pecking a hole in the (still erect) pole and watching happenings from there. time shall tell.
btw, I am not missing a single minute of this year's may pole party!
When will the party be?
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