Snow melts on the mossy log
telling the tale:
The dance of winter’s yin and yang
is at its balance point.
Neither holds sway.
Things can tip either way
and will, for days.
Spring’s advance
makes fools of us all.
The Balance Point
Simply Happiness
Happiness, I was thinking today, while floating
in its midst, is such a simple thing. And yet
how hard we work to find it; how we make it
so complex. I laughed. It was either that, or cry.
It was so plain, in this silken moment, that
happiness isn’t something you strive to obtain
as much as something into which you relax.
We don’t increase our experience of it
by adding more things, or drama, or complications
to our lives, but by releasing the things that stand in its way.
We don’t have to dig for it, or climb towards it,
or run after it with a net. We can simply breathe.
We don’t have to hunt it down; it’s everywhere.
We don’t have to build or create it; it already is.
Right here. Right now. Like air. Like light.
It’s not something we have to earn, or win, or deserve.
It’s already ours, given to us as freely and naturally
as our lives are given, as much a part of us as the blood
that flows through our veins, the oxygen that courses
through our lungs, the spark and crackle of the joyous song
of movement continuously playing through muscle and nerve.
And all that blinds us to it is the make-believe of stories
we tell ourselves and our dream that things are otherwise.
Splashdown
Such a ripping of the air!
Such a cacophony of sound!
All at once, from nowhere,
a flock of geese splashes down.
The waters leap up to meet
webbed feet. Wings flap
and fold. And before I can
even catch my startled breath,
they’re settled, and silent,
and floating as if they’d been there
for hours, as if their grand entrance
hadn’t awakened entire worlds.
Leaves on Ice
The ice had barely finished forming
when the wind came, and with it
pine needles and a troop of leaves
rushing to the lake with joyful abandon,
landing on its solid, thrilling cold,
and the ice giving way only enough
to hold them where they could see
the heights from which they had flown
and the wide, unobstructed sky’s light.
Below them, beneath smooth rocks,
fish dreamed of the music of forming ice
and the laughter of pine needles and leaves.
Gift from the Forest Floor
I want to dig up this patch of ground
In some magical way that would permit me
to do so without disturbing a millimeter of it.
and then to place it within a shadow box
to hang on my wall, where I would gaze at it
daily, or better yet, to package it in such a way
that I could place it in your hands, where
you could breathe its perfumes and truly see
the depth of its livingness and be filled, as I am,
with transcendent wonder that such a thing
could be, that it could lie in total obscurity
deep in a woods to sing its song only for
the crows and deer and pines and be
content with that, gloriously.
Lessons in Low Places
The afternoon is overcast with clouds
that filter the light, turning it pearly.
And it’s warm – well above freezing
at last – and the wetlands call me.
Frankly, it looks dreary. Dull browns
and grays. “Color and form, Susan,”
some inner mentor reminds me.
These are gifts, these winter lessons.
I toss my judgments into the sky,
empty my pockets of labels, feel
the wind, hear it in the branches
and brush and reeds. Only the wind
and nothing more, and it is moist
and cold and wonderful. A light gleams
from the edge of the woods and I step
toward it and see it is a low spot with
ice lingering on the blanket of leaves.
So here it is, found, of course, exactly
when it was least expected, exactly
where, and exactly what I wanted
and needed and hadn’t even asked for.
Wisdom from the Boards
Remember the cluttered bulletin boards I mentioned at the beginning of the year? I shared my intention to re-do them and told you I had written it on my do-list. Well, I did redesign them, and I’m pleased with the result. They contain photos of a few of my pals, little “pokes” that say things like “Smile”, “Celebrate What Is,” “Doodle, “Read,” a couple of my ink doodles, and quotes and slogans and reminders that unfailingly wake me up.
The largest piece on the first board has grabbed my attention more than once this week. I don’t know the source. I heard it somewhere and scribbled it down. Anyway, here’s what it says: “Look around you. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year.”
I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s like, Pow! It just smacks me in the face with its wisdom and plain truth.
Here’s something else about that little group of sentences. It instantly reflects to you your level of optimism. Do the changes you imagine might be coming at you, at us all, in the coming year prompt feelings of hope and anticipation? Or do they evoke ripples of fear and dread?
There’s no right or wrong answer to that, by the way. You feel what you feel. The sentences just give you a way to notice what that is.
But I will say this about fear. Again, it’s a sentence I scribbled down while listening to something. I do that a lot. It’s why I’m developing a process for dealing with the scraps of paper I scribble on all the time. But that’s another story. The thing I heard about fear was “Fear is putting faith in what you don’t want to happen.” It could also be putting faith in what you think has happened or is happening now. Regardless of the time frame, fear is agreeing with yourself to believe in the thing that scares you. And unless that thing is standing right in front of you and growling in your face, you’re imagining it and putting faith in its reality.
There’s no judgment with that. It’s just an interesting observation about fear. It intrigues me because it asks me to evaluate where I’m putting my faith and my energy and attention.
We’re in the middle of a cold-snap here, the silver lining of which, for me, has been time to sit at my keyboard and dream. I gaze up at my bulletin boards and send loving thoughts to the pals pictured there, I read a quote or a prompt. I’ve resumed doodling. Eventually my eyes fall on the rectangle with the words, “Look around. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year,” and I give thanks.
Wishing you a week of appreciation and well-placed faith.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Dream in Invisible Ink
She dreams, on a frosty morning, that she is migrating with the wild geese.
The wake of air that trails from their wings makes tunnels of spinning light
as they stroke into the frozen dawn, their calls echoing against the cold.
Ahead, she sees the bay of a great lake, solid now, a flat steel gray,
and she falls with a flurry of downy white flakes to its ice-heaped edges.
Near the shore, winter reeds pen haiku with invisible ink on fresh snow.
An Irish setter walks past, stopping to read the lines, burying his nose in them.
“Bailey!” a woman calls from a house that sits on a rise above the shore.
“Bailey! Come!” And the dog trots off.
As a pale pink sun pushes above the horizon, its light spiraling in tunnels
through the falling snow, the calls of geese echo from across the bay.
She wakes, and finds a gray feather resting on her pillow, glistening with snow.
Mid-Winter, Looking North
What if today, I wondered, were the last day?
What if the great Here of the planet itself
ceased to be, and all that remained of it
was what remained in the memories
of those who had dwelt in its embrace?
Would I take with me fields of goldenrod
and daisies? A child’s face? Spruce boughs
seen through a window etched with winter frost?
Would I take the a loved one’s touch?
The wind? The stars? The sound of a choir?
Or of laughter? Or a guitar?
What would be etched in the book
of my mind—what beauty, what love,
what truth—if today were the very last day?
This Green Grace
It’s one of those things you take for granted,
fail to see, having shared space with it so long
that you think of it no more often than you think,
say, of the nail on the little toe on your left foot.
It’s like the geranium I mentioned earlier,
blooming its heart out over there on the hearth.
Yet here it is, a mind-boggling absolute miracle,
this green grace of branches that dances
outside the north windows day after day.
How we flatter ourselves to think we are aware,
hey?