What felt stuck ~

March's sensory almanac.

March . 2025
What felt stuck ~

A willow in the field
means water
underground.
And you:
you’ve done it
deep down you
you’ve become water,
free as yolk streams
from the cracked shell.

๑

March: what felt stuck

is now completely effaced.

You’re ready.

I am ready.

Even though I tremble at the lip.

๑

At the beginning, there was a willow, Salix babylonica, the pendulous branches, the backyard. I am very young, and it is like any ordinary day in England: green, grey, lichenous. The sky wooly. I am very young, sitting alone on a blanket my mother laid out in the yard, the ground is damp, as it almost always is here.

Willow, pendulum: I would sit and gaze upon this tree for hours, listening to the wind in the branches, our silence together not a silence at all but a communion of our own.

And how the willow bends, it dances it sways. Willow is brook water, it is wind.

Long skirt of branches, light yellowing green. It looks one way externally and another within—thick red medicine of the bark: red and astringent and tasting of naked mud.

Bristled catkins, soft as fur, and flexible roots, swimming, submerged.

Long ago, I was a little girl. I learned from willow then, what I know from willow now: how to walk through time, how to listen. How to love the path that brings me to soft fur, wet roots, red mud taste of memory.

Willow, you have bent me. In a swaying world, I can return here beneath your branches, tendrils of leaves, and inside your basket you move me, move me to stillness.

๑

Many layers down the thaw has already occurred and you can tell because the willow is starting to look flush again.

It looks like the willow is blushing.

The willow is blushing in the otherwise empty and fallow field.

Willow is a water tree.

What I mean is, wherever you see a willow there is sure to be a wealth of water, even if you can’t see it—even if it is only underground.

Perhaps you’ve bent a branch and found it soft and pliable in your hands? Willow bends like a water nymph in your grip.

And it is for these reasons that willow has been used to: find water, to divine with, to make baskets in which to carry things, cradles in which lay new babes, and woven caskets with which to hold the dead.

As versatile as it is pliable—this kind of flexibility will be your greatest ally in the month ahead.

Because things are happening. And you, dear one, have set them in motion. Just as I have. And so, you must muster your inner water nymph to greet what rises up to meet you.

๑

And you know, this is not always easy.

And you know, spring, I find, comes with an onslaught of grief.

Grief is not always a bad thing. It often happens at glorious times. It often coincides with joy—is perhaps best described as the other side of the same coin.

I’ve begun to believe that true joy cannot exist without the exquisiteness of grief. I now see that they are often inverted expressions of one another.

And spring: oh, great rush of water of warmth from the rigidity of form, of comfort hard fought for against the dark and cold and long nights. Things so hard to relinquish… but it is crucial you let go of your own accord to flow with the tide of your life.

๑

And so for the rest of March, which contains a most important threshold moment (the Vernal Equinox) in its collection of days, you are being reminded of willow, you are being reminded of water.

I recommend finding a willow nearby to observe over the course of the month.

And I recommend recalling to yourself all the ways in which water exists and how it moves and what sounds it makes. Create a list. I will start it here and you can add to it:

cools, clears, cleans, washes, floods, drowns, hydrates, laughs, bubbles, freezes, flows, rains, streams, pools, wells, waves, salty, brackish, fresh, spring, sparkling, mineral, still,

๑

And as March unfurls in its banners of blossoms, its crescendo of birdsong, its flushes of sun and retractions of warmth, its back and forth, its lion and lamb, I will leave you with this line from Ralph Waldo Emerson. May it be a little touchstone or a prayer of sorts, something to remind you of the immensity of being alive only to be bent and thus reborn over and over and over again:

I am a Willow of the wilderness, loving the wind that bent me.

๑

Okay, the almanac for March is watery and clearing and chockfull, like any good vernal gift is.

For instance:

What is spring without a little resurrection? Perhaps you remember when I used to publish my quarterly newspaper, The Pearl Vine? Well, I went back to one of the issues and I am resurrecting a favorite piece of mine submitted by my dear friend, Jessika Fancy.

Oh, and:

Also included is something incredibly top-secret. Which is a demo track of mine that will be released on a forthcoming split cassette later this spring via Hot Releases.

I haven’t released any new material like this since 2017, so truly willowing my way into this latest phase of my work.

Enjoy ~

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T A S T E

The Chickweed cures the heat that in the face doth rise,
For physic some again he inwardly applies

— Michael Drayton

Chickweed (Stellaria media)