Summertime--Not Easy
Spring came and went while John and I were in Minnesota. The apple, apricot, plum and pear trees bloomed and their petals fell. The birds ate the tidbits that otherwise might have grown into fruit. I'm looking at those trees now, out the window of my writing room. Everything outside has grown raggedy, but nothing in me objects. It could rain again today, just like yesterday and the day before. Uncommon weather for June, prompting sleepiness. Summer is here, more like a Minnesota summer than what I've become used to in the Pacific Northwest. Did summer hitch a ride from Minneapolis and cross the plains and mountains with us?
Today marks the birthday of St. John the Baptist says my breviary. But isn't his feast normally on the summer solstice? In Ireland the bonfires of St. John's Day light the sky during the shortest night of the year. "He must increase; I must decrease," says St. John on the day the sun reaches its zenith and begins to fall again into the dark. Is summer an illusion, beginning as it does on the day slippage towards winter's dark begins?
Summertime: this I suspect--living is not easy.
Forgive me. I'm pensive. The days of grief unfold long, not necessarily sad, but with a kind of light that penetrates. X-rays. Do I have zen-eyes these days, these nights? Look at the plum tree. It's leaves are membranes; I see their bones. Will the time come that I can see through rocks? Through the mountains that surround this place? Liz's words, those last weeks, were bones of all she'd been. Skeletons of her deepest thoughts, her most profound hopes. "Liz's Last Words." I thought I might devote this blog to those in days to come. But, you can see, I'm not yet able to articulate blog entries. The place in me from which the words emerge is still too thin. There's very little substance to my thought. She has increased; I have decreased.
Such is as it should be. She'd decreased already enough to open and allow her immortal soul to explode through the penetrable tissue and bones of her spent body, for her soul and spirit to unite and become endless--for galaxies to whirl within her shining.
Today marks the birthday of St. John the Baptist says my breviary. But isn't his feast normally on the summer solstice? In Ireland the bonfires of St. John's Day light the sky during the shortest night of the year. "He must increase; I must decrease," says St. John on the day the sun reaches its zenith and begins to fall again into the dark. Is summer an illusion, beginning as it does on the day slippage towards winter's dark begins?
Summertime: this I suspect--living is not easy.
Forgive me. I'm pensive. The days of grief unfold long, not necessarily sad, but with a kind of light that penetrates. X-rays. Do I have zen-eyes these days, these nights? Look at the plum tree. It's leaves are membranes; I see their bones. Will the time come that I can see through rocks? Through the mountains that surround this place? Liz's words, those last weeks, were bones of all she'd been. Skeletons of her deepest thoughts, her most profound hopes. "Liz's Last Words." I thought I might devote this blog to those in days to come. But, you can see, I'm not yet able to articulate blog entries. The place in me from which the words emerge is still too thin. There's very little substance to my thought. She has increased; I have decreased.
Such is as it should be. She'd decreased already enough to open and allow her immortal soul to explode through the penetrable tissue and bones of her spent body, for her soul and spirit to unite and become endless--for galaxies to whirl within her shining.
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