Facing East

To watch spring rise from the ground like a symphony is to breathe like a sparrow. How the heart hops along with light little feet! Yet tulips remain tightly bound and the daffodils now begin to lose their sunny disposition. Rain and more rain softens every hard edge. I am alive now, though. The dog and I stare out the window – she is facing the direction of greatest protection – I am facing east. Always east.

Every perception in my scope has been informed. There are no pure explanations or thoughts – no untainted prayers – no discovery whispered as absolute truth. I used to have this insatiable capacity to melt into complexities. The push into complicated hemispheres was to be admired and more than that; it was proof that this life, this world really, is a fertile existence that can not help but yield the birth of that which is deeper. For so long, there was a pulsing drone: dig, find, allow. Nowadays, there is just this little creek bubbling towards and away from me. My little creek has mossy rocks settled along the banks which have become a host to those wishing to drink or bathe or reflect. A cardinal couple has been there already this morning, dancing from stone to stone, taking sips and flinging up water into the air as they rinsed. Ferns are now overtaking the unfurling hostas in height and the Lily of the Valley pips have begun to outflank the wild viney ground cover that simply refuses be managed.

This whole world as viewed from my east facing window is just that: my whole world. The quantum physics and the metaphysics and the myriad of explanations have thinned into an early summer mist that has both not quite arrived and has already been long gone. Squirrels eat the birdseed and ask for no pardon. Late frost nibbles the hyacinth's perfume and can't be bothered for reconciliation. Why would we be more than these?

I still think birds make the best poets. They don't seem to be interested in the pattern of results or commercial literature or theories of our time. They just accept what emerges and continue in the beauty and full-feeling of whomever they are. Cardinal as philosopher. Creek as teacher.

East
as light

initiating
me