On A March Day

by Sara Teasdale

Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind
That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,
Making a key-board of the earth to strike
From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,

Bear witness for me that I loved my life,
All things that hurt me and all things that healed,
And that I swore it this day in March,
Here at the edge of this new-broken field.

You only knew me, tell them I was glad
For every hour since my hour of birth,
And that I ceased to fear, as once I feared,
The last complete reunion with the earth.

The wind, after dinner, in the yard, the Special One shirtless and shoeless on the damp earth, our eyes caught by the circling, low flying, wide-winged hawk over our heads, under the fast-moving clouds, and the wind picking up, picking up, the dry leaves from the gutters and ground flying up, floating by. Last day of March. A mid-day, not morning walk. A long one, Charlie and me, warm wind and I’m over dressed. The River is rippled mildly. The bitter cold has passed, and April becomes: tomorrow. On the way, early morning, to drop the Special One off, I have two talks with Frank. The first, short, and I’m irritable. He is patient. Then, remembering what is on my mind, at the core, perhaps, of the irritableness, I remember a story I want to recount to him of yesterday. I call him back and then we have a deep talk where I get to what’s on my heart, and he listens, and he’s all there on the other end of the phone, saying exactly what I need and want to hear. Not just saying it, feeling it, I feel that he understands. This thing leftover from a therapy session with my daughter. Old wound being healed. This is why the Teasdale poem caught me up tonight, her lovely lines: Bear witness for me that I loved my life,/All things that hurt me and all things that healed. . . Yes. The wind is blowing still and evening falls on the very last of a March.