Spring Cleaning    
 
The first fleet sun-arrows fire the moist dark blade which slowly blushes 'neath the carressing eastern gleam.   Ever onward plods the mare with heavy hoof, her cold steel companion in the early labour following all the while.
 
With the pursuing edge of metal keen comes constant parting of the glistening frost-decked earth as furrow's rampart rises, turns then lies at rest.   In the fresh still silence shimmers a sigh like voice of waves which never break yet leave their silken echo reverberating in deepest caverns of the mind.
 
The plougher stops.   He listens long, his body tense and still.
 
And now he smiles and contentment fills each rugged feature as, with opening of the year's first furrow, he hears the Earth's soft breath of morn.   Whether this long low sigh, which each year is awaited with certainty, falls upon the ear or is evoked by some race memory of the Gael he knows not and cares e'en less.
 
Across his inner eye flit scenes from childhood tales - tales of the ransoming of The Lady by The Young Lord of The White Steed from Winter's stern forbidding keep.   In truth She had returned and Spring had ended the chill Dark Monarch's reign.
 
Tongue clicks in cheek and off the trio sets with all the field and all the year ahead, and the plougher's heart is light.
 
His thoughts swift turn to scurrying daughters, the bustle and haste of wife, and home that soon will spin and spin like some high mystic tower, till mountain peaks of table legs and chairs will range themselves like a hostile legion to bar his mid-day entry for well-earned respite.
 
Spring clean indeed!   Why must this disarray preceed the evening's comfort?   And yet grudgingly he conceeds that to build the new the old must first be wrenched apart and cast aside.
 
Now the golden ridge ahead proclaims a challenge to his doubts and warring thoughts. "Did this majestic universe at its glorious birth spring not from aeons of whirling chaos?"
 
To him, the cleaning has indeed been over some long time.   The earth is rich, refreshed and cleansed by winter's dreamless sleep, even as the pain of weary arms is sloughed off in the silent hours of night, and as a trying illness slow abates and body is purged for strength's vast tide to shoreward come.   Now in the morn of the year all is as new and eager for the planting.   This too must be the time to plant within the heart and soul of man.
 
He nods in full agreement with himself and in the knowing criticism of those who rashly say that resolutions must be made at New Year's dawn.   Surely this is the youngest time of all twelve months when seed-time should apply to humankind as well as field.
 
For this he has prepared and, as always, after months of bitter northern blast which seemed to find the citadel of life within his mortal frame, he knows his cleansing too, like earth's, is at an end.
 
So let the women be content to throw all in wild confusion and shake the tangible world by its shoulders as is their springtime custom.
 
Their orderliness may rise within the hour, but his, like strong gold grain, will grow with the seasons' royal procession until at appletime he reaps reward of inner labours with the year's last sheaf as outward symbol.
 
With glowing face to morning sun he continues the long proud march, a trifle more triumphant now, as soul and field take breath for breath and son and Mother labour on as one.
  Copyright © Gareth Pengwerin 1973   MOUTHINGS