So,… you go to work, you come home, you do the dishes and mow the grass and on your mind are all the words you’ve not been writing. I’ve got three novels on the go, two short stories, an essay on the I Ching and another on the nature of Qi for the website, also my alter ego has promised a friend a piece for his antiquarian magazine. And none of it’s going anywhere. The truth is spring’s a distracting month: very beautiful, usually settled and dry, and the garden begins to erupt into colours you’d forgotten from last year.
I find myself watching my Laburnum tree, waiting for the cascades of yellow to open. Then there are the blues of the domesticated bluebells, the reds of the Azaleas, the shocking mauve-pink of the rhododendron and the plum red of the Japanese maples. Then, on the wilder side, I walk through the woods and am moved by the carpets of white anemones, contrasting with the blue of the wild bluebells, and as the anemones fade, the blue of the bluebells plays a startling duet with the white stars of garlic scented Ramsons.
So you set the words aside, because they cannot compete with the beauty, nor the mood of the season. You sift idly through them of an evening, but without drive, without ambition nor anxiety to press on because I know the words will come again, when the muse has lifted her snout from the petals of that exotically scented flower.
The Rivendale Review 