Pre-Spring Has Sprung In Asheville

And so have my thoughts about Romantic Poetry

This bunny sits on the steps of my favorite house in my neighborhood. In the fall, the owners replace it with a stone owl.

Last Friday was teeth-chatteringly cold, a sleet-hail-rain “wintry mix” pouring down from the sky, the wind gusting hard enough that my deck chairs fell over with a thud and slid across the wood floor. I canceled plans to go out to the Asheville art galleries’ “First Friday” exhibit openings, and curled into a ball on the couch, underneath a blanket. From this perch, I watched the art-housey film All Of Us Strangers on Hulu, which was poignant and compelling but made absolutely no sense — even The Daughter, who understands pop culture far more than I, was flummoxed.

And then the days since — suddenly — have warmed up to feel like “almost spring.” I say almost because mornings are still cool enough to turn on the fireplace, the tree branches mostly bare, save for a few precocious species, such as this Tulip Tree I spotted on my walk yesterday.

Spring is my favorite season. Daylight savings keeps nightfall at bay, allowing me to walk after work. Each day grows a little longer, my mood uplifting with every additional minute of sunlight. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly fond of spring’s cusp: the first few weeks in March before the vernal equinox, when, gradually, we have more warmish days than cold, and the birds’ songs and blossoms’ scents fill the air.

In this seductive pocket, the promise of new life and summer frolicking beckons. These fertile moments — when robustness lies ahead, and nothing is yet lost — make me feel like I’m eighteen again, but this time around, my 18-year-old spirit is wise enough to savor what soon will be gone.

January and February were too brutishly cold for this former Californian to do much nature-walking. But now that March has brought more temperate climes, I’ve been outside every chance I get. Yesterday morning, I didn’t start work till noon, so I took a two-hour stroll through my neighborhood.

If a Romantic poem could be imagined as a piece of land, then Kenilworth, this Kudzu-covered, twisty-hilled, slightly run-down but ever genteel, historic-homed patch of earth southeast of downtown Asheville certainly would be a Keatsian ode.

Kudzu mini-forests like this one populate Kenilworth.

Dead from tuberculosis at 26, John Keats fought off his impending demise by frantically crafting verse fueled by his determination to live exuberantly while dying. Gone before he reached his full potential, his poetry captures the ecstatic “not-quite-ness” of moments on the cusp, newness never spoiled: lovers just before a first kiss, blooms that never wither, artists whose art never gets stale.

This 1915 Colonial Revival Home has been turned into a B&B, The Sweet Biscuit Inn. The innkeepers leave dog biscuits on the front steps so pooches can grab a treat while out on a walk.

One of my fave houses in the ‘hood, this one sits on a corner across from The Sweet Biscuit Inn.

Whimsical gingerbread-y house-lette up on a knoll.

I thought about Keats, and the rest of the Romantic poets, on my walk. I thought about how being closer to death than to birth has changed me and how I experience life now: colors are brighter, gratitude is deeper, moments are savored. Except when the moments are cold and sleeting, then I just cocoon myself under a blanket and wish I were on the Italian Riviera.

But what I mean to say is, this cusp-of-spring is luscious. Look:

A garden in the ‘hood.

Because everyone needs a gargoyle in a fountain.

Pansies!

Daffodils!

I have no idea! But they’re pretty!

I leave you with this scene from another walk I took this week, around North Asheville’s Beaver Lake. If you listen, you can hear the birds’ chirps rising above the whoosh of the cars, and the wind. I’m not sure what they’re saying, but my guess is they’re fired up about pre-spring too.

“Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;

And happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful, and cloy’d,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”

- excerpt from Ode on a Grecian Urn, by John Keats