GRASPING UPON GASPING

Oh, there are times, there are times. Times when all seems quiet and yet with so many words. Times when there is such silence and such noise. I am speaking of the slowness and the quickness. I am speaking of the sense that life rushes, and yet is as methodically slow as it has always been. I know you feel this too. I think it’s stronger when you have dreams buried deep in your chest, your abdomen, the soles of your feet, in your eyes. I have dreams there. They call to me, and I can’t come to them quickly enough. They visit me in the night. Don’t leave me! I am always going and approaching. Do we ever arrive? I think the only true arrivals are birth and death. Everything else is a cleaving together of matter upon matter. Waiting upon waiting. Holding upon holding. Grasping upon gasping.

I feel at home here with the creatures who keep me company. From the first weeks we moved here, I’ve kept a mental diary of all the animals we have seen. I feel I know their spirits intimately. I am so grateful for their sweet souls, their fierce protections, their wild calls in the dusk as they fly over my head by the fires I build. The deer and the geese are always here. No matter what the season. My breath catches in this feeling of homeliness, the feeling that I am wrapped in the fabric of my own soul. I love the way the ground comes alive in this spring time, the way the grass suddenly turns technicolour, the way The Wizard of Oz comes alive. I love the way the white blossoms smell, the musky dusk of the trickling water and the hay on the banks, the resounding symphony of frogs whose imperfectly perfect music is better than any thing I can hear elsewhere.

I love that life loves me here, and that I love this life with the very force of my own existence. I know how lucky we are to be here on this planet. In 120 years none of us will be here anymore. The entire planet renews itself. Life is tenuous and yet ever straining, ever bubbling in the mud, quietly waiting, for its time to come.

Deer

Geese

Crane

Beaver

Turtle

Frog

Hummingbird

Carpenter Bee

Groundhog

Fox

Bat

Firefly