Category: Summer 2024

The little field flowers don’t grumble
that there’s been so little rain.
They don’t care that they’re not roses.
It doesn’t occur to them to worry
that no one may ever stop to notice
and admire them. They don’t compare
their shapes or hues to their neighbor’s.
“Better” and “more” mean nothing
in their world. No one ever told
them that you have to have whole lists
of things in order to be truly happy.
So they just dance in the breeze,
and radiate their joy, and celebrate
this moment and the Yes of being
just what they are. Right here.
Right now. And isn’t that grand!

All day the little grasshopper leaped across a world of green,
marveling at the great globes of water and the sudden streams
that cascaded down the leaves and stems where he landed.
It was all quite beautiful, he thought, this world of glistening green.
But then, as he looked up the tall, smooth stem where his last leap
had brought him, he saw a bright color that he’d never seen before
and it took his breath away. It wasn’t a bird. It was no leaf, either.
It towered from the very top of the stem where he sat, wondering,
and it seemed to be singing his name. Being a bold and curious fellow,
he quickly determined that he must check it out. And so he flew
up, up, higher than he’d ever been before. And when he landed,
he thought he’d flown to heaven, so golden and glowing
was the world in which he found himself. And the walls
of this heaven were living and breathed his name.
And he was the happiest grasshopper in the world.

Summer’s kaleidoscopic days unfold,
new jewels emerging with every turn
of the lens. The iridescent winged ones,
the rainbows of petals, pearly seeds and berries,
jade and emerald grasses and leaves.
And all the while the air is filled
with fragrance and song, with buzzing
and breeze, and the nights wear
stars and fireflies. Such gifts!
And all so freely given.
All so freely given.

Choose to participate in beauty.
Let it enter you and find in you
a glad thanksgiving. Choose
to celebrate the moments
of goodness. Let them sing
to your soul and find there
a harmonious and eager response.
Choose truth, which writes itself
in a hand so bold that it shines
through every deception.
Then you will live in the heart
of life’s garden; glad, even when
there are thorns.

Send up the fireworks! The sun has returned!
Here’s balm for the bees, and to please
all who wander here at the forest’s edge.
The long-awaited summer has arrived.
Let the celebrations begin, the hoorahs
go forth. Greet this glory with singing.
For now, at least, the rains have ceased,
and the sun warms the green sea of foliage
gone wild and red flowers bursting with joy.

July comes in, barefoot and sleeveless, ready to pour it on.
She opens some paper-thin orchid-hued petals
and smiles at the sweetness of their hue.
She has a thousand more blossoms in her bag.
She’s fond of high color, after all.

But mostly she’s interested
in pushing out the veggies and the fruit,
in driving the nuts and seeds toward ripeness.
She’s all about widening the leaves,
deepening the green, making edibles from light and air.

She has countless mouths to feed
and she intends to satisfy them all.

“Ripen!” she trumpets as she glides on the sunbeams.
“Grow! Become what you were born to be!”

Listen, it’s all a gift. No matter how it feels.
This moment is larger than we imagine
and could not exist as it is but for our part
in it. Our seeing stitches it together.
Our words are notes in its song.
When we move, we move the whole atmosphere.
We breathe air and drink water that has circulated
through countless other bodies before ours.
Our thoughts shape the future and color its days.
We give time its meaning and rhyme.
And it all shines back at us, a perfect reflection
in the grand cosmic mirror, of who we are,
each of us, and all of us together.

What if we who are here now
will be the last ones to walk
among the trees. Ever.
To walk anywhere, for that matter.
The push of the final button
in a world that has gone insane
seems well within the range
of possibilities after all.
Any day now, everything
could be gone. All of it.
But today I walk in the woods
on a perfect summer day,
breathing in the smell of it
as if this were the first time
I ever experienced its perfume.
I give thanks for the vibrant green
life of it, for the packed dirt path
beneath my feet, for knowing
that I, too, am alive, right here,
right now, remembering words
from an unknown poet:
My cathedral has no walls.
Amen.

Then, when you least expect it, a glint of garnet red
so radiant that you can only gape and stare
pulls you into its depths, all the lush green
that flooded your mind a minute ago, utterly gone,
leaving in its place a crown of golden flowers
rising from vermilion petals, their only mission
to sing to your eyes in joy.

This is my world now, this dance of green,
with all its stories and lessons, its healing,
its comfort, its flow, its movement, its peace.
I stare at the trees, as astonished as always
to realize anew that they are living beings, fellows
on the journey through this particular moment
and place, astonished, too, that such beings
could be, and me, with eyes to see them
and a heart that hears their songs.