I lollyed as of late

I Lollyed as of late,

in a soft and lingering spell

of not much,

except for faery and wishes and such.

yes, it’s a word.

I just made it up,

so as to tell you this very story.

I often make up words,

when there isn’t one that says quite what I would like it to.

Lolly is a little like wander,

but, not really.

There is less thinking in Lolly,

and more…knowing.

As sweet as a butter mint,

melting in your mouth.

As enchanting as a bird

taking off to the heavens.

You follow as long as you are able…

softening your gaze,

so you can see,

that which no one else can.

Lolly wings you farther away

than you have ever been

in a single dawn to dusk.

No clocks hang there,

Ticking…where you should be.

instead..

only dreamy escapes at half past maybe three.

A train will carry you there,

ferry you there,

tarry you there…

until the gentle rhythm

eases your weary spirit

in a way you didn’t believe possible.

Disembark now,

let go the path…

but not alone.

You are never alone.

There is no far apart in Lollying…

…only ever closer.

Didn’t you know?

eventually……you will arrive,

in a breezy glen of painted blossoms,

ruffled and freckled

and tenderly laced.

Fragile petals spilling over the edges

into tomorrow circle

and backwards too

into yesterday lane.

Beyond even this prize

is a cozy dozy nook

of forget me not treasure

simply waiting to be discovered…

right here…

almost too small

for searching grownup eyes

are the tiniest letters

carved ever so carefully,

marking this place

our place

then and now and…

always…

****

ellie894 April 4, 2019

Big moments?

Spring turns to summer in Texas! Really?  Are you sure? Because, I won’t fib, today mostly feels the same as yesterday.  Ellie rules the roost.  Period.  No ifs ands or buts.  Jack is going at his regular breakneck pace looking for our next big adventure.  And Bo rests his head in my lap trying desperately to be adorable so I’ll share my last bite of buttered toast.  He loves butter almost as much as cheetos.  Even Dobby is getting along splendidly.  He’s a very new story for another day.  Sigh.  How do they find me?  Nevertheless seasons change and my daily life changes with them.  There’s not much to see really.  If the calendar doesn’t remind  me that today is the day, how would I even know.  Most of us are so far removed from the natural world these days that the changing seasons don’t mean as much as they once did. The turning itself is something though. Spring is new!  We’ve waited and tended and worked.  New is upon us!  Spring is a time of flowers, Passover, Easter, and graduations of one kind and another.  We look to each of these as transformative moments.  None of them lasts very long.  But each asks us to reflect on what has been, to celebrate it, often to let it go.  Make way for what’s next.  

When someone graduates do you honor their hard work and  accomplishment or do you encourage them towards their dreams as they move forward.  Honestly, you probably do both.  Still, the celebrations and festivities we most associate with spring are at their core about profound transformation.  How fascinating to me that a single ceremony, a single calendar day can pass quietly before us and yet we are supposed to feel that somehow Now things are different.  I am no longer this.  Instead…I am this…new, different.  It’s an odd moment I think, and it takes me a while to catch up with the meaning of it.  Sometimes all we can do is move through it, letting it be what it is.  We instill such grand importance on what we deem to be the big things in life.  A festival has taken place.  Life is new!  Isn’t it?  

Towards the end of winter branches are bare and the world is rather gray.  Suddenly the air warms up a tad and there are a dozen shades of green everywhere you look. The flower bud closed so tight against the world one day changes its mind and opens its heart in blossom.  It’s true then I suppose that all things transform and renew in a moment that we may not even see.  We are not misguided in our hopes for the future, our dreams of the new.  But, we look too hard for the change itself.  We want to see it and know it.  We want to pencil it on a calendar with a date and time.  We will arrive early to get a good seat.  Our camera will be at hand to capture the perfect moment. The moment of change.  We’ll be there with bells on.  And we won’t miss anything.  

We expect too much from the big moment.  In the expecting we miss the beauty of what is real.  Those things that change us the most usually arrive without fanfare.  They can surprise us with either joy or sorrow and are almost never captured in a photograph.  They are the unseen flowers that dwell in your heart. There are plenty of things I keep track of by calendar so as not to forget them. Others are so much a part of me I couldn’t forget them if I tried. Those are my own anniversaries of the heart.  Mine alone.  There are more of them with each passing year.  My heart is tending a garden while I am otherwise occupied. 

 So, it’s rather fitting that as spring turns to summer there isn’t much to see.  In fact, I almost missed it.  Until, I headed out the door for a nice stretch of the legs.  I walk partially because my sweet but  energetic four legged companions demand it.  Into the woods.  Over the fallen log.  A joyful splash through the creek.  The sky open wide before me as I hit the field.  No ceremonies.  No festivals.  No expectations.  Just an unremarkable moment.  The wind whispers through the trees telling me the story of the spring and its passing away.  Clouds float overhead transforming as I watch.  Shifting effortlessly from one form to another easily letting go of the last one to make way for the next knowing it will be different…but wonderful nevertheless. 

 I reflect on what has been.  It’s the small things I recall.  Early morning feedings of a tiny new life.  Quietly starting wordpress on one of my own anniversaries of the heart.  Being humbled and surprised when someone takes time to read my thoughts.  Too many walks to count.  Waiting.  Simple adventures.  Pie!  Jack j juice box, as cute as a box of juice! Then like the seasons ask of me, I let go and turn forward to what summer may be.  Hopefully an abundance of morning glories.  Reading and writing amidst the daily necessities.  Certainly there will be sorrow too but I’ll take that as it comes, as gently as I can.  

As surely as there will be mosquitoes and poison ivy and very hot days, there will also be iced tea on the porch swing, lazy evenings listening to the frogs, and my annual reading of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Tucked in among it all is a new anniversary of the heart waiting to be discovered. Perhaps I’ll know it when I see it. Probably not though. Moments like that are far more quiet than jack is when he begs to be noticed. When I’m not looking it will gently take root in the ever growing garden of my heart. And there it will be, waiting. One day it will flower before my eyes and I’ll wonder at the newness of it and how beautifully different everything is than it was just moments ago. 

nuzzles

 Spring has arrived in East Texas. Signs of it are everywhere I look. Flowers. Butterflies. A thousand shades of green.  Greta.  And of course, this little guy.  He/she is not quite a week old.  Baby bunnies are like kittens.  It’s nearly impossible to tell their gender with accuracy for at least a month.  He entered the world Tuesday April 4 after dark.  I guess it really began a few weeks ago.  I became suspicious when I caught our dog Jack intensely focused on one particular spot of the back porch.  Days later I watched as he chased something from the yard into that very spot.  Both bodies were moving far too fast to decide what our new friend might be but I have had rabbits in the yard before so it was a guess in the right direction.  A few more days later I was returning from an evening walk.  As usual I stood at the open gate waiting for the dogs to trickle in one by one rather like a kindergarten teacher accounting for every little one coming in from the playground, hot and messy and tired.  Jack lingered at the edge of the woods before he began to run around in odd circles seemingly alone in the tall grass.  Soon he was headed straight for me and the open gate.  Good boy Jack!  Wait… Before him as fast as lightning a wild bunny came rip-roaring through the gate  nearly running over the top of my foot.  It sailed past me and straight to its safe spot…you guessed it…under the porch.  So, definitely a bunny under there.  That’s when I began to worry and hope beyond hope that it was Not an expectant female.  For the life of me I can’t imagine why she would want to nest in a yard with four large dogs.  Nevertheless, she Was expectant and Did nest inside the fence!  How do I know?  Well, Tuesday night Jack brought this little guy into the house, brand new.  Now, Jack isn’t bad.  He’s a wonderful dog who simply has a great nose and wants to play.  With everything.  To his mind he had found a fabulous new toy.  Although the mother had been seen diving under the porch more than once, locating a nest wouldn’t be nearly that easy especially in the dark.  Mother rabbits are not very attentive to their young.  They only visit the nest twice a day to feed the babies but otherwise steer clear of it so as not to attract potential predators like Jack.  All those times she lead Jack to the porch was probably a mother’s way of keeping his attention on her and away from where she  would give birth and keep her babies.  The bunny seemed newborn and fragile but otherwise unharmed.  First I made certain that Jack wouldn’t be able to get out for the rest of the night.  Next I lined a small deep basket with a towel and some fleece that I bundled around him for warmth.  Then waited for morning.  He made it through the night.  Check! I walked a slow path around the yard searching for signs of the nest or more babies.  I found both.  Rabbits nest on the ground almost in plain sight.  It’s bizarre how trusting they are and how we don’t stumble upon their nests more often.  A mother pulls back some leaf litter adds some of her own fur for warmth and softness, places the babies in and covers them lightly.  Then she leaves.  That’s it.  And like I already said, she only checks on the nest twice a day.  It would be futile to put a helpless baby bunny back into a place Jack already knew about.  So, there I was with a new baby to care for.  I did find another one.  He had been removed from the nest and left elsewhere in the yard uncovered and exposed to the chill of the night.  I provided him with the love and warmth that I could.  He refused to eat and the night’s exposure was too much.  He didn’t survive the day.  So much sadness right at the beginning.  But this one had a strength about him to keep on.  He accepted me as a surrogate mother.  He sucked down his special formula fidgety but adapting to an eye dropper instead of a mother’s nipple.  Hunger won out over the oddity of it I suppose.  He relieved himself Really Well!  That’s so important with a baby like him.  If plenty comes out then you can rest knowing that plenty is getting in.  So many fun things to think about!  In less than a week he’s become a sizable part of my thoughts and of my days.  Even now as I write his basket is nearby so that I can peer in pull back the fleece and assure my fretful heart that all is still well. He knows the sound of me, the scent of me and perks up his tiny ears and wiggles his tiny nose when I come near.  When Jack brought him in on Tuesday night I was afraid.  I went through this last spring.  It was touch and go for days on end.  That little one didn’t make it. I failed.  I failed period.  I failed him.  I cried…for him, for what might have been, for the loss of a tiny life that I came to love.  I know that wild bunnies are very hard to raise and it probably had nothing to do with anything that I did or didn’t do.  But knowing a thing  and believing it in your heart are two different things.  So, when this baby found his way into my life and my days I was afraid.  The truth is I still am.  He’s far from out of the woods yet.  I keep on.  I hope.  I open my heart and offer him the love that I have doing the best I can to help him live.  I wonder if his own mother is feeling lost and lonesome.  There is already talk of a small piece of fencing that might allow her to enter but keep out Jack if she should choose to nest again in this new favorite spot.  The baby’s sweet days have a simple structure.  Eat and be loved.  On my end there’s more to it than that.  Prepare formula.  Clean and sanitize all of his eating and formula supplies.  Feed him slowly at his own pace.  Clean him. Clean his supplies.  check. check. check.  We humans love to score and to tally.  We love to make lists and cross things off when accomplished.  He ate. He urinated. He slept.  check.  check.  check.  Success!  Life isn’t a giant score card.  My life isn’t and neither is his.  One cannot tally everything and why would you even want to.  Success cannot be measured in check marks.  I love the way he reaches for the sound of my voice.  I love the way he licks his lips.  I love the way he drinks his milk when he’s hungry.  I love the way he nuzzles against the warmth of me when his tummy is full and he’s ready to fall back asleep.    I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  I don’t know if he will make it.  Although everything that I don’t know makes me afraid, I will keep on.  Choosing to love him and care for him.  And if another tiny life should find its way to me in a week or in a year, I will do all of this again in spite of the fear.   Life isn’t about check marks or crossing things off a list.  Life is about how much love you give.  Life is in the nuzzles.

Rare Jungle Birds

**

**

Pileated woodpeckers!

They are huge birds at two feet tall.  

They don’t show themselves very often.  

Once in a while I catch a glimpse of them as they sweep through the forest.

But I always hear them before I see them.

They sound so out of place in east Texas. I ask myself if something has escaped from a rainforest exhibit at the local zoo. Seriously! Their resounding call is tropical, even Amazonian.  

The first few times I heard it, I thought, what is That?!  Now, I recognize the song and smile inwardly.

Recently I found this tree. After a bit of research I figured out that it is their handiwork.  Clearly they are as fierce and powerful in their hunting as one might imagine.

Pileated woodpeckers dig more thoroughly than an archeologist fresh on the trails of ancient history. The fresh pale color of the shavings tells the story of spring nesting and hungry babies. I have not sighted the birds themselves yet.

But, no doubt, they are nearby…

Rare jungle birds have come home.

****

ellie894 March 18, 2019