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Pinecones, Portals, and Poets
No small thing is small, or so it seems to this human found by a pinecone on a warm January day. Continue reading
Category: Way In
Fall and Faith
What is it that seems to be held to the center of me and reaching out at the same time, like my heart is attached to the world beyond me– to the birdsong, the dripping wet leaves after the much needed rain, the goats in the barn, the sky that opens and closes as I move among the trees. Faith is an embrace.
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Winter, Spring—just like that
A snowy world patterned by crisp lines of tree shadows: that was this winter, still strong in my mind’s eye, strong in my heart, as I remember January and February in a winter that felt like winters from twenty years ago. Snow on the ground for weeks, several storms dropping ice, snow, sleet again and again. Many mornings putting warm water in the frozen bird baths. Bags and bags of sunflower seed distributed in seven all-too-quickly-emptied feeders. So many birds! Even the snow plow came to our faraway, long gravel road twice this year. Continue reading
No Going Back
I don’t have faith in that circling dance of seasons anymore. Instead, it’s a “you can’t go back” chant I’m hearing from the universe, at least the small space in it I can tune in to. Will I learn to accept that the place where I live is not what it once was? How can I not grieve for what has been lost? I don’t know. I do know that nature’s loveliness, what I can see at one time with my own eyes within the microcosm of a walk in the woods or across my yard, sometimes overpowers those questions. Continue reading
Flower Ghosts
The world shifts completely based on the space between two numbers on the thermometer. I lay in bed, then, hearing the restless wind. I imagined the ghosts of countless salvia flowers, thanked them for the way they’d made sunset multiply and hover in the garden, how they’d fed the hummingbirds and bees. I imagined their spirits filling the invisible air like tiny red flower kisses sailing up through the clouds, beyond the moon. Continue reading
What matters most?
“What matters most?” is a question I ask myself frequently, as I choose and rearrange priorities for how to spend my time, daily, hour by hour. Even minute by minute. It has taken sixty years for me to recognize this question’s power and necessity in my life. And I’m only just beginning to see how slippery its answers can be. Continue reading
Too Cool for Words
Then I looked at him without the phone between us, trying to make eye contact, wanting to tell him goodbye and that I hope his season in the world has been a good one. Anyway, I’m sure he saw my eyes searching for his eyes and knew what I meant by that. Continue reading
The Threads that Hold Us
In both what grows and what dies, Autumn seems particularly suited to remind us how things really are; what we’ve forgotten we are reminded of again: mushrooms a visible sign of the unseen life under our feet, without which we wouldn’t be here; the dangling leaves of the death that awaits us; and the threads that hold them, visible and invisible, of how the world entangles us, regardless of how we decide to look at it. Continue reading
Precious Bugs
The trail through the woods this September morning is bereft of spider artistry. Where are the webs? So I drop my spiderweb stick and notice instead the dappled light, cool dampness in the air, vibrant green moss against the beech tree trunks. I hear a few calls from widely separated birds and the sound in the distance of a few crickets and perhaps a cicada. I try to rise to the challenge of not comparing what is to what used to be. Continue reading
Wood Thrush
I stop my rapid steps to listen: Chattering pip-pips like laughter, Soaring songs a hallelujah chorus from angels not created in our image. The woodthrush fills the woods with more than sound, a tangible presence invisible inside the dark forest made darker by the backlight of sunset. Their melodies carry magic. They help me breathe, help me lift my arms and spread myself, tilt my chin and look up, forget what keeps me in my head. The barking of faraway dogs disappears as does the memory of the machine cutting hay this afternoon. Gradually the pip-pips cease, songs grow long pauses between, the forest quiets into twilight. And I am a body simply standing in the road. Continue reading