Hello, I'm Jeremy Beaudry. Welcome to my place. Words, photos, drawings et cetera.*

Ring of silver flashes on
the black skin of the still river
bone rattle the king fisher
and the song birds harken

the first light of today
a thousand greens unfold
across the hollow
sunrise modest behind

the faint wisp of cloud
gold dust on the conifer branches
sparkled with night dew
in a moment the sun fires

its ray — direct hit to
pupil, retina, brain
obliterate all other time
and sense

the afterimage written for
a moment on the back of
my skull like a thumbprint
on a window

then change again
and again

how will I change today

In "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" (1942), George Orwell muses:

Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird's song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of left-wing newspapers call a class angle?

I learned of the essay in this short film by G Anthony Svatek (via Aeon.co), which features a wonderful reading by Tilda Swinton.

Orwell wrote this essay during the winter of 1942, deep in the winter of a devastating world war. Orwell, again: "The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it."

We have our winters, too — real and metaphorical. The privilege I enjoy is immense. My family and I are safe, when so many others are not. As far as I can tell, we will not be abducted by ICE. We will not be deported. We will not be disappeared, or made illegal because of our identities.[^1]

Like Orwell, I can decry the inhumanity of these times, the cruelty of these wannabe autocrats, and I can seek wicked, subversive joy in observing the seasonal changes of Spring.

Diffuse Dawn

Diffuse dawn spills over the eastern ridge
floods the room
not to drown
but to fill up this cubic space
for today, light is love
for no other reason than
I am alive
I am here
I feel this life

The atoms of matter
congeal into slow time
radiant energy
I hold in my hands
like cool morning sand

And can you hear the birds?
The chickadees alight
duets, trios, quartets
the constellations of frenetic song
the rise and fall of melodic habit
they sing — regardless!
How embarrassing that I
would ever think otherwise –
the hubris of humans
to orient, to bend this world
to our willful eye

Now, the golden orb crests the
summit, capping these
reflections like punctuation –
exclamation mark!
The dusty film on the window
glass glows (another task
undone, the window washing)
I sit in this moment
a cosmic sponge, the matter
of my soul
depends on it

[^1]: ICE and CPB are detaining and deporting immigrants and migrants in Vermont. See "US Border Patrol arrests 8 migrant workers at Berkshire dairy", "Palestinian man legally in the US detained in Colchester during citizenship interview", "Tufts graduate student was held in Vermont after arrest in Massachusetts by immigration agents, feds say". One way to help is by donating to the ACLU of VT and Migrant Justice / Justicia Migrante.

I step out and listen for the chickadees, smell the earth beneath the snow melt, wrap my arms around the sunshine, and greet the change.

Up the road behind the house to the stump dump to find the bench and the trash receptacle and the giant pile of dirt and the trail into the woods. Straight ahead, turn left, look up, kneel down, breathe back. Wait, the bench.

I understand this moment, now fixed here in code. Winter sun, stalks, shadow, snow and tracks. Also, me, I, the subject, the protagonist, the invisible. You, there, looking, reading, perhaps waiting.

On a borrowed bike in Plasencia, Spain, I follow the path along the Rio Jerte out of town, rounding each bend with wonder at where I'll end up. I feel the lure of discovery and adventure, yet wonder about how far I can allow myself to travel in the limited time I have, a familiar tension that sometimes leaves me late, or lost. I lose the path, find a road, climb a hill, and then my reward emerges from over the summit: a quiet straightaway over the dam that holds back the embalse de Plasencia — the reservoir to the northeast of the city. Water like plate glass in shadows. More than this expanse, I again behold the particularity of the Spanish sky. Sharp cerulean blue saturates the dome, tufted with low lying cumulus clouds. Echoes of El Greco landscapes mix and wash over me like dry wind, cooling my hot eyes.