I have the request out for people to write about the merry month of May and two Writing It Real members have shared work on the subject.

First, we hear from Robert Komishane and enjoy his sense of humor and then from Linda Caplan, who writes of how May brings respite from anniversaries of losses as well as the spirit of those who have gone.

Thank you both for sending in your words.

As I post this week’s writing, I am wearing a heavy sweatshirt and listening to the heavy rain that has been showering down on us all day here. Our May here in Western Washington is the coldest in years and the rainfall in the first two weeks of the month equaled the rainfall for the whole month in other years. And these showers are not supposed to end for days.

So, for some of us, with the weather and the news of war in Ukraine and the roiling political world here at home, May might be a month this year of disappointments. It is okay to write about that. And perhaps more reason to look for the glimmers of what the month could yet bring, the blossoms still there under the cold and wet.

From Robert Komishane:

Here’s my May poem, written a long time ago. It’s one of my shortest poems:

It’s May—HOORAY!

From Linda Caplan:

May:  Merry, Marvelous, Magical, Mysterious, Musical

The month of May. It is the beginning of the hot months in southern Arizona. I get anxious when the weather breaks 100 degrees. I fear the coming onslaught of the temperature rising, rising, rising upwards to 115 or higher by mid-June and July. It stays suffocatingly hot, sometimes through October. So I flee then to the beach in California, where the breezes calm my nerves and anxiety.

Nobody I know died in May. . . January, April, June, August. Those months I live in anticipation of the death anniversaries of my husband, father, mother, and son. All within five years.

I have been spared May. My daughter’s birthday is in the middle of May. Always a good celebration. Mother’s Day is bittersweet as my beloved mother, the last to pass, just had her one-year milestone. My son, who never failed to say, “I love you,” at the end of a telephone conversation or text, has been gone only two years.  My father, three years, and my husband five. The loss is almost too great for me to carry. Accumulated sadness.

But May turns into my month with a passing grade, a “get out of jail free card,” a respite. In the desert, nature is breaking out: flaming cactus flowers on top of thorny pads of green, desert daisies, palo verde trees bursting with sunny yellow flowers. Unstoppable flowers that fly through the air in the breeze, blanketing all their branches, making carpets that remind me of the yellow brick road. These little yellow buds pool on the curbs and crunch under my feet as I cross the street. Saguaros, towering proud poles with spreading arms, dot the dry landscape. Then suddenly, on their crowns appear unlikely bunches of white flowers, creating a protective cap from the punishing sun.

May is when my resident cardinal visits me. Every day. Soaring through the treetops. So red, it’s impossible to name its color. Scarlet? Fire engine? Ruby? Crimson? Like a toreador’s cape fluttering from branch to branch. I see him pause on a branch and cheerfully call to me, “Hello, hello! I’m back, I’m back.” His song is unmistakable. He carries the red on his fluttering body, symbols of love, joy, passion, and sensitivity. I’m forced to embrace May with all the signs around me.

Spring has certainly arrived carrying the souls of my loved ones.