First Person, Present

A fullness of life surrounds and infuses Full Moon these days; I can almost hear the carbon dioxide-fueled photosynthesis occurring all around me. And taking in all the oxygen that the green life is sending out in return is intoxicating (or maybe it’s the wine we’ve been sharing on the back deck at day’s end)…I’m reminded, daily, that all of life, all of nature–which includes us, but in which we are not dominant–is neither good nor bad, but only sacred and blessed. The only response I can make is yes, thank you.

Our world is a nursery, over-spilling with new life: flowers, birds, insects, trees, fruits, and vegetables are being born everywhere. Fields have been plowed and seeds sown, nests are full and my gardens are overflowing (a sure sign it will be an autumn of thinning and replanting). For now, they throb with the buzzing bodies of bumble and honeybees. Swallowtails and monarchs flutter and chase among the gardens, and birds sing most of the day, into dusk.

Painted turtles have been wumbling down the driveway, scraping aside earth and digging little pockets for their eggs, and our friend and expectant father, the mallard drake, makes house calls every morning, checking-in on the nest.

The mystery that creates longer hours of sunlight but less time to accomplish everything I’d planned puzzles me, but naps help soothe the strain of the season’s higher math perplexities.

I continue to bike to London and back, most days. (That’s London, Wisconsin, about 4 miles north of Cambridge, and 25 miles west of Rome, in our dreamscape geography.) Life in the marshland and on the lake is just as opulent and full of grace.

This has been an amazing spring; heat and aridity may follow, but I can’t give energy to possibilities and dread when every moment is crammed with so much life. “Look at me,” says the world. Look here! And here! And here! And I think I could fall into this richness, this oxygenated greenness, and emerge on the other side, in some other Wonderland…

I try to be present to both the rising and falling of the year. “Now” is always my favorite time and as I get older, each new season astonishes me with its revelations. Each offers mystery and invites rituals; each stimulates creativity and inevitably, leads to silence.

A few years ago, at just this time of year and late in the day, I happened to be passing through the kitchen and glanced out the large windows facing west to see something magical happening on the lawn. A hatching was occurring, of insects so tiny and delicate that, as they ascended, the low, setting sunlight flashed through them and they became rising points of light. From the sky, hundreds of dragonflies appeared, swooping through the floating lights and consuming them, their own wings flashing and iridescent. The tiny lights continued to rise, the dragonflies to whirl and swirl through, feeding on them. Phillip joined me and we watched, for almost an hour, in silence.

Here we all are, so briefly, shining and consuming light, becoming light and feeding life in turn; how lovely to be part of the rhythm, this beautiful dance, around and around. Now is always my favorite season.

 

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