Late September in New England. A few dogwood leaves are stained with purple while not far away a white rose still blooms. The pear tree streaks yellow, the Japanese Elm is tainted with the beginnings of orange. The grass is still green and growing, but its pace is tired. I am determined to watch this transition, this changing over. I have singled out a leaf in the great oak tree in the front yard hoping to see the first tint of color appear. But it is not only sight that is affected during this time. There is a quieting taking place as if silence itself were looking for its proper rest place. The care-full watching and listening comes with a price. Along with the awe of seeing beauty born I feel an apprehension, a mixture of tender sadness and mild fear. Something hard is up ahead but it is yet too distant to fully imagine. A sense that now’s the time to garner strength, ready the soul’s firewood. Astonishingly, I know people who claim not to feel this subtle dread. Here where I live there are many who wouldn’t trade the change of seasons for a full time island paradise. I suspect that what they’d miss is not just the landscape transformation but the hues of feeling that accompany each phase. So I tell myself to be like my hardy neighbors. Can I embrace the inner resonance of each color? Let my heart be a flute played by the day’s breath.
September 24, 2011
January 6, 2011
Beauty
It is both a searching and a being found. A going toward and a waiting for. A putting out and a bringing in. This thing called beauty. A building and a making, a creating that needs to happen every day. A stalking for traces of it. Glimpses in unexpected faces. It’s not just the red flower weighed with dew. It’s what’s behind it also. It’s not just the cloud noticed for the first time or forgiveness. It is the night and the distance between us. I keep a sharp eye for you. Even as time moves you, it can be a moment, just a moment. Radiance. The tree lit with fire. The pang. The heart pang. Exploding. No longer the need to question. No longer the need. I was found. You come and rest even as you fling. Stay. No, it is not possible. Yet, the memory and the new alertness. The practiced eye. The certainty. The gratitude. The Silence.
November 28, 2009
True Love
I thought I would get philosophical (for a change!) and ask what it means to love a book. I often hear the phrase: “I liked it but I didn’t love it”, applied to a book. It surprises me to hear the word love so selectively applied to a book when it is so easily bandied about otherwise: “I love these potato chips.” It seems that we have more reverence for the word “love” when we refer to a book. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just my own inner desire to save the preciousness of the word by using it only when I believe it to be true love. It seems to me that love for a book entails both the rapture of first love and the commitment of forever love. If that is the case, no wonder I find it hard to love just any book. By “rapture of first love” I mean that recognition of the book’s beauty, its goodness, its literary qualities all of which are experienced in a kind of rapture, a losing of myself in the world of the book. (Sounds very much like falling in love for a person, doesn’t it?). By “Commitment of forever love” I mean that I choose, that I select and prefer this book to the many other books I have read. It means that the book is now a part of me and I a part of it. It means that I don’t want to leave it, that even as I finish reading it, I already want to return it. It means that along with the passion of the initial rapture there is also a peace that is intuitively recognized as lasting. This is true love for me. I only want to add that true love is subjective. There are “classics” that I don’t love and there are what many would consider poorly written books that I love with all my heart. With these last kind there is a recognition of souls that takes places that pierces through the surface. May our hearts be always full of love.
