To Hurt This Way

Slowing down for the beauty of reading the way one sentence can rip open the cosmos – like Clark Kent revealing his superpowers. It is like that nowadays.

Several trips are made to haul the neighbor's old split rail fence on my shoulders to the garage to measure and cut for the garden. This can lead one to think about generous humans leading to a generous heaven. Or is it the other way around? I dig up Lily of the Valley and give them to friends and they each tell me a story about how the flowers remind them of their grandmother's love or their favorite place in the woods or their mother's wish to have flower at her grave.

High humidity yesterday caused sweat to pour from everywhere, stinging my eyes as I stood – knelt – stood. Pulling at roots stronger than I, there is that unexpected moment when they give up, throwing a tantrum of dirt as I fall backwards. I am ridiculous with how many times I fall in the garden. But I'm so happy to hurt this way.

Lately, it's birdsong breaking it all down. In springtime I wonder what it is like to live in a place where one cannot hear how they sing every thought. It must be like winter, only worse, for even in winter the chickadees and cardinals remain this far north. But oh the glorious choristers at play in May!

Pollen coating everything in a lemon-lime shroud. On a walk, one studies the pattern on birch trees and realizes there absolutely is a code. Proximity matters. I don't know how to hold whatever this life is, beloved. And to sit open handed means only that there is sitting and hands. There is letting go and then there is letting go.; which one is this?