Category: Spring 2024

If I were a bird, that’s where I’d be,
on the highest branch of the tallest tree,
watching the world, feeling the breeze,
catching the songs, completely at ease.
I could fly off; I do as I please.
But how lovely it is at the top of the trees!

I watch the trees dance in the spring air,
their newly unfurled leaves like lace
against the sky. I remember that today
is the last day of April, perhaps
the last April that I will ever see.
So I pause and look at all the days
that unfolded as April breezed by,
ushering in a waking world beyond
all we had imagined. A parade
of wildflowers flowing on the hours,
astonishing surprises at every turn,
an endless spectrum of mood and fragrance,
and all of it vivid and alive and real.
Some, I suppose, will remember you
for your torrents of wind and rain.
I will remember the beauty
of all you brought to life.
I bow to you, April, as you take your leave.
Farewell, sweet one.
Farewell.

As I walked beside the lake, heading
to the lower pond, a flash of light
caught my eye. Curious, I turned
in its direction and spotted a man
at a picnic table by the swing set
beside the park’s only shelter,
a laptop and a stack of books
spread before him. My first impulse
was to walk on, leaving him to study
undisturbed. But the sight
was so unusual, that I couldn’t help
but approach him. “I just wanted,”
I said as he looked up and smiled,
“to say hello to a man who is wise
enough to choose a place as quiet
and nourishing as this in which to study.”
He grinned. “It certainly beats
my dorm room,” he said.
“Well, may you become your class
Valedictorian!” I said, waving
farewell as I resumed my walk
and he returned to his studies.
When I was far enough away
that he wouldn’t notice
I snapped a picture of him.
Someday, maybe I’ll tell folks
that I encountered him once
when he was just a student,
studying in a patch of pines.

Some folks, they tell me, dream of a heaven
where the streets are paved with gold.
I walked in the park today, my pathway
strewn with wildflowers, the scent of lilacs
perfuming the warm spring air, thinking
to myself that this was all the heaven
I could want. This, right here, beneath
my feet and breathing all around me.

Tonight, the highway, now a luminous ribbon,
winds into the distant misty hills, the wet pavement
reflecting the light of the setting golden sun.

Open your bold simplicity, and
let your song be clear and strong.
This is the moment for which
you were born, the now
in which you unfold your grace
and make your mark on the eternity
of our hearts, so that we may sing
the Yes with you until
the last star disappears
from the deep and infinite sky.

It’s not that nature’s beauty consumes me.
It’s the refuge it provides from the rest of it –
from the conflicts and disasters large and small
that cover the globe; from the endless prattle
of the lonely because talking is the only way
they know to mark the world with their presence,
to connect, to find meaning; from the struggles
for survival, for status, for power, for control,
and for all the touted doodads that promise
to convey them or to provide relief from the fight.

Walk in the woods. Listen to the trees.
Observe the details in the smallest flower.
See the seasons unfold. Watch the clouds
and stars float above you. Take solace
in an order beyond our knowing, a power
and intelligence we cannot comprehend.
Feel how you are a child of it, how you move
within its omnipresent embrace, loved
even when you are asleep in it, unconscious
of its plan and grace and mercy. Wonder
at its intricacy, its obedience to inviolable laws.
Think how this is but the skin that the Yes wears,
this mysterious, ever-dancing curtain of matter.
Think how majestic is that which brought it
into being and bestowed on us our capacities
to see, to taste, to move and desire, to seek,
to find, to love, and, finally, to know.

Mimicking nothing,
following nothing
but its own inner song,
trusting that being
is its own reward,
reaching only toward
fulfillment of this
moment’s highest
possibility, it unfolds
its exquisite perfection.

Except that the Yes is the source of joy,
spring needn’t have come with such beauty.
A limited pallet might have served as well,
a handful of standardized designs.
We could have as easily performed
our daily tasks without being caught
in spring’s web of wonder, without
being stopped in our tracks to gaze
and smile at wee pink flowers
whose centers burst with polka dot stars.
But the Yes, which is made of love,
cannot help but leave its beauty
everywhere, just in case your heart
might need to hear its song.

It’s odd, the memories that a sight can trigger.
When I saw the newly opened tulip In my garden,
for instance, glowing orange and magenta and pink
and gold, at first I just stopped, and held my breath
and stared, mesmerized by its hues. Then it came,
the memory of the teacher on the first day of art class
telling us that some things are beautiful, some not.
As an example of the latter, she said a mix of pink
and orange could never be considered beautiful.
I dropped the class. Had she never seen a sunrise?
Or the petals of a tulip?

It’s not the circumstances that matter.
So what if, at any moment, the world
may explode? It has nothing to do
with me, with now. The trees are
dancing in green hurrahs and the earth
is covered in flowers. The mammoths,
they say, died eating daisies. If
the world ends in ten minutes,
I shall leave it dancing with joy.