Pomegranate

Perhaps the world is already ready and willing to give you anything. Today grass ignites on the hillside in a roaring spring fire – with green the color of its flame. Blue bird, song sparrow and redwing shout silvery glees to moist fields and meadows as shrubs and saplings, appearing dead from root to twining vine, push forth buds once again to eternity. A fresh wind slides eastward over the surface of all that is awakened, until it reaches the living surface beyond. 

Maybe just as it is glorious to behold a ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, or the bare face of a pond with the joy of fishes within, there is much to accomplish today. Knife in hand, you wonder how to best penetrate the hard outer shell of the fruit to get to the goodness inside. To begin, remove the flower from the top and cut at an angle. Once split open, be prepared for the one big, sweet juicy mess of all the jewels of the world to tumble out.

Place (flowering)

Perhaps I wandered into a place that pretended to be as carefully mapped as a labyrinth, with an outer edge but no center. So much was happening, and I was too alert and alive to keep a single focus: dark-colored spores and fungus threads catching rides on the backs of mites; young box turtles sifting through layers of dead leaves while on the hunt. Here, trees were so much more than roots and branches, and big bouquets of showy flowers roped by sprays of nectar drenched me with splashes of scent and sweetness. Limb to limb I climbed upward until my arms ached. It grew dark. To my astonishment I fell asleep. When I woke at dawn I was happy to see I was still surrounded by trees, up where the flowers are.

Maybe as I doze in the high canopy, butterfly wings brushing colorful petals carry pollen aloft. A group of birds steadily gathers beneath me, sifting the soil with their beaks, searching for more than just seeds. In the center of older trees a dark aromatic wood is steadily forming, bringing with it a pithy maturity and heart. Buzzards drift above in lofty airborne circles, illuminating the way to all who feel hopeless, orphaned, abandoned or invisible to themselves.

Lovers

Perhaps the heart of a moth hides a house of spark. It is a prick of plush, part blood, part chalice. This heart runs a most beautiful path around any dread much as the heart of a butterfly rifts in petals of lift to embrace the crisp swoop of dawn – a true window to trills, leaps and soars.

Maybe while the heart of a wasp is a czar that cannot be confined, it may be best to leave her nest alone. Is it really worth all the sting to bother her? Blue-quilted silks veil the gusty hearts of damselflies darting and dashing in fitful dreams of mist through shifts of leafy trees, gilded wings barely visible. So it was when love slipped inside of us. 

Old Growth

Perhaps life did not always exist on this planet. Yet at any time we can experience the results. Like it or not, it is the mysterious work of our own hands that returns to entertain us generation after generation in unthinkable shapes, colors, and forms. 

Maybe the image in my mind of this lonely blue marble (only half illuminated at any given moment) afloat in a vast and endless sea of darkness, leads me to ponder how it was that single-cell entities emerged that could so easily spin sunlight into substance. How is it a place that was once lifeless rock could make way for salt water, humpback whales, and scientists with neuston nets measuring the health of ocean ecosystems worldwide? Even now, we are the victory and battlefield all at once as life evolves in thriving layers accompanied by shifting shapes of a darkened hemisphere unleashed beneath us in all her disturbing splendor. And so this will be for a very long time.  

Anything else but

Perhaps we do not live by anything else but what is necessary. It is what rises in the trees, what lifts our arms and drives our hands to trace natural exchanges between distant oceans, rivers and clouds. It bathes us continuously and enters into us as bread, as wine, as fruit. It allows all human hearts to sing two notes at once – one rising, one falling, and is perhaps, in its diverse forms, the only thing in the universe that constitutes a force opposed to gravity.

Maybe when I am alone in the early morning, I am a deep quiet pool that allows this exchange to surface. It feels safe to be me, exactly where I want to be. The new day sends out a small wind, carries a bee along, lifts pollen from the grasses as the open cup of a poppy radiating with a coolness contained in the center of her stem beckons to the warm heart of a bird in search of her favorite nesting spot.

Her Garden of Roses

Perhaps it’s that quiet way she shows up so unexpectedly into our lives, assuring us we will rise from the ashes, giving us all we need to survive and thrive in difficult times. Her voice is fresh and soothing spring water rushing through my body and returning it to life. The only rule is don’t come back the way you left. Always return a new way. Water is something you cannot hold. Believe me, I have tried.

Maybe as she rests cloud-like above, nourishing the wheat she planted seed by seed, row by row, lit by her luminous crown, all remembering becomes forward facing, leading my attention away from the compulsion to be everywhere at once. A purifying light enters my room, softening my heart, and I have the impression that I am not alone – that there really are two of us. 

New Year's Day 2021

Perhaps today we can say that if she hadn’t in some way filled the void we would have fallen into it and died, and that yet, in our eyes, the way she had chosen was the most offensive one. But at the time in the piercing light of our cold stares, she couldn’t help but feel guilty of holding back something that would come and explain everything to us later, conversing in a calm and private silence.

Maybe as unfolding events went muddled in our minds, she squeezed our wrists hard, as if she wanted to harm us. As she paced up and down the waiting room, launching into a tirade of complaints because we weren’t paying any attention to her, we found we had lost our voices. When we finally opened our mouths to speak to her knowing that she wouldn’t be able to hear us, like stars that guide only in brightest daylight, in that brief moment, the heaviness bearing down upon us lifted. Happy New Year! we sang to her in a chorus of our best voices wrapped with bright, metallic paper - practically shouting, nearly shining, almost crying.