Into the Silence

 

Season of surprising silence
when the air is still, as if
holding its breath,
when the cavorting of spring morphs into
the slow maturing of summer,

when the early and almost-forgotten
display of spring bulbs and
woodland ephemerals is becoming
the not-yet-flashy August garden,
and
the trees' and shrubs' exuberant
new growth settles into the barely discernable
process of ripening nuts and berries,

when, in the vegetable patch, the early lettuces,
spinach and peas have given way to
the not-yet-bearing tomatoes, peppers and beans
and 
the cacophony of enthusiastic avian mating song 
has become the stealthy movement of parents
going about their, day in and day out, 
never ending
feeding of nestlings 
not yet fledged.

I wait so long for spring and
once more it has come and gone.
And now?
I wait.
In this silent seasonal
liminal space
between promise and fulfillment
again
I wait for all that
comes next. 

And somehow, the waiting
becomes watching and 
the watching becomes participating,
and the participating becomes embracing
the holy space of belonging to all the
world around me.
It is enough. 

 

Of Strawberries and the Wood Thrush Song

Early June, and the strawberries are
bursting with flavor...
plump,
juicy, 
and sweet,
recalling the 
memories of every strawberry
I have ever eaten.
Each one at their succulent
peak for a day,
before the process of
decomposition begins,
still edible, certainly,
but no longer
exactly perfect.

Early June, and the wood thrush
bestows his
long-awaited, 
ethereal,
haunting melody
upon all who have ears.
Soon, however, when this year's
breeding is complete, his
voice will still, and in
silence will he forage and
flit through the trees.
In three months, he
will be gone.

Bees on the foxgloves,
newly-fledged chickadees chattering in the apple tree,
fragrance of mown hay and the mock orange,
bluebird sipping from the ant moat on the hummingbird feeder,
simple, simple noticings that ground my days.

Into what is this moment inviting you?
Be open.
Pay attention.
The Holy is beckoning.

                                                                        

Emergence

 

As the cicadas blindly make their

way through the soil

that bore them,

and last winter's buds burst

into white lace on the fringetree,

the juneberries that were flowers

a few weeks ago plump and color,

soon to ripen.

As tadpoles are growing legs

and losing tails,

and the newly hatched bluebirds

are on their way to becoming fledglings,

the tiny balls of fluff, tucked

safely into the straw mulch of

the vegetable garden, are looking

more and more like the rabbits they

have always been.

As cotyledons pierce the

the seed coat and emerge in 

the dark of night,

and snakes writhe to shed the
skin that confines them, 

caterpillars, unimaginably, dissolve
themselves into the newness

of butterflies.

I trust the ways of 

metamorphosis but

what about me?

I know the restlessness that

precedes birthing in the wild ones.

"Am I not also wild?"

"Trust the process," he said.

Who and into what am I on my way

to becoming? 

Who and into what, are you?

* Dedicated with thanksgiving to Glenn, Jo Ann, Doreen, Susan, Daniel, Glenda, Janet and Charlotte.