faded colors, sweet potatoes and a shower of champagne…

July 14, 2019

Despite the heat,

I have been outdoors

For the last two days

Tending

To roses

And grasses

And trees

The sunny dappled garden of my days

I even dug in the dirt

To plant the already sprouting

Sweet potatoes

I offered them a better home

Than their pantry basket

Did you know

If given the chance

They make a lovely vine

The tendrils are delicate

The leaves decorous

And the green is decidedly delightful

So it was

That I was

Tired and sore

And, I almost did not walk last evening

But,

I changed my mind at the last

And went ahead anyway

How happy I am for it

For whatever carried me to there

Away from my to dos

And into the fields

Tended by their own dear sky

A wind blew cool from the north

A welcome respite in a Texas July

Bringing along

Snowy whites and threatening grays

It surprised me

And caught me

In a bubbly sparkling rain

How still I stood

To listen

To a thousand fairies

Dancing from leaf to leaf

In joyful innocence

Open the eyes of your heart

Their silvery wings whispered to me

And so I turned

From beneath the cover

And protection of the juniper

To see

An enchanting bow of faded colors

Filling the air with hope

And my dreams with surrender

I imagine it to be a circle

And wonder where it travels to

Beyond where I can see

Into a brightest elsewhere

Of love’s eternal hide and seek

How very grateful I am

That wonder called to me

And I listened…

Behind every poem is a fullness of thought. So it is with this one. On a July day, I planted sweet potatoes. I walked to a hilltop where rain caught me. I marveled at a rainbow arching over field, forest and home. And, I listened.

Recently I read a small book about cultivating silence. Thinking about silence suddenly makes you keenly aware of all the sounds that you hear. Silence reminds me to listen.

Even though everyone, including me is bestowing Happy Autumn wishes, it is still summer in Texas. It’s nearly October and this very minute I hear the sound of the sprinkler rhythmically turning under the holly tree, splashing everything in its path.

Hummingbirds are performing a brilliant “cirque de soleil”. I am the lucky soul with a free front row seat! They twitter and hum as they playfully zip-zing and then rest for a time among the prickled leaves. The hummers eat more in September than at any other time of the year. I think it’s because they’ll leave me soon. They’re fattening up before their long journey. I wonder what their tropical getaway looks like and whether they miss the holly tree.

Those sweet potatoes that I planted are so cheerful! If I can keep Jack and Dobby from romping through them they will grow all the way into December. I giggle that I find so much to love about them. You see, I’ve never liked to eat sweet potatoes. When I was a child I couldn’t stand them no matter how deliciously you dressed them up. Even marshmallows made no difference to me.

Gosh Mimi, those sweet potatoes smell good.

Would you like some, suzanne?

No thank you.

In truth I probably made a squinchy face and said Blech as they were heaped on my plate. If only I had had Bo back then. He would have sat blissfully at my elbow scarfing down every yucky bite I snuck to him. But, that’s a story for another day, aptly titled – The Dog Eats Half My Food!

Now, I eat sweet potatoes twice a year. They’re fine. But, I will never be a fan.

However, I do love to watch them grow. They create a twirling elegant vine. In autumn I buy them fresh at farmers’ roadside markets. Some I cook. The rest wait to be planted the following spring. I know, July is nowhere near spring. I was incredibly late this year. Nevertheless, in the ground they went.

I didn’t have very high hopes for them. After all, we were heading into the hottest driest part of the year. Who plants anything in July?! This year, I did. And, you know what? They have grown above and beyond my expectations. They are the happiest little patch of heart shaped leaves and curling tendrils that you can possibly imagine. They have spread like a low lush forest. You never can tell who might be playing in there…

Back to that July afternoon –

There was rain! Fluffy clouds rolled in and surprised me. It hinted of champagne. A cork joyously popped!! Bubbles spilled over the edges and the sky winked at me as if there was something special about this moment. And there I was caught right in the lovely center of it. I can still hear the drops cascading around me in my secluded hilltop waterfall.

There was a rainbow! Have you ever noticed how silent they are. Not a single sound. They come and go without ever crying out or begging to be seen. How many do we miss because we are occupied in thought or in doing. But this one…I heard. In its own gentle voice it rhymed and sang and invited me to dance. The colors gathered me and sailed me to far away places…into enticing dreamscapes as I wondered where its other half might be. I stayed and stayed not wanting to miss a single tender hue or precious step.

And, then there were sweet potatoes. They lay quietly in their dark underground cavern listening…to the earth and the rain and the colors of the rainbow telling them All that they would become…in time.

The last few months have been parched. I don’t have an answer. Sometimes life is like that. Dry and dusty. You wait, for rain and for hope to come. In the meantime, you do what you can. Turn on the sprinkler. Enjoy the hummers. Be someone’s rainbow. And, listen to the sweet potatoes grow…

May your spirit find refreshment in listening to the soft and silent things that touch your heart.

Suzanne ❤️

****

ellie894 September 29, 2019

Note there are no photos of actual sweet potatoes or casseroles in this post because…you know, reasons. 😉

in the heart of every moment…

The music beckoned to me

To go

So I went

In search of what

I cannot be sure

But, when I came to rest

Deep within the soul

Of my own belonging

I looked down to my feet

Planted firmly upon the sturdy ground

And what to my enchantment

Did I find there….

…but an ancient,

primeval forest…

A wildness beyond my imagining

As near as my touch…

It contained its own bewildering completion

Before it would ever even begin

I am mesmerized

As I leave it behind me

Will it stay there

Where I first found it

Or will it travel farther than far

To become all that it was meant to be

The music beckons to me

To go on

So I go

Wondering as I do

At how many moments in a day

Hold the vast possibility of everything

Yet, we move too quickly

To know they are there

I see a primeval forest

At home in the depths of your gaze

I see an ancient universe

Dance in the sparkle of your smile

In the heart of every moment

Eternity is hoping

To become the love story

That it was always meant to be…

****

ellie894 July 30, 2019

Listening to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony

tucked away…

I often write things

that I fear are not worth reading

So, I tuck them neatly away

Fragile thoughts folded in upon themselves

The words fade and the pages yellow

As a memory floats into view

*

…of being ten years old

picking blackberries

in a blazing Texas summer sun

no clouds, no shade, no wind

while my cheeks burn red

my pail remains nearly empty

as i search endlessly

hand to mouth

for the One…

you know which I mean

the One that brightens your lips

in a triumphant juicy smile

of sweet buried treasure

once lost

now found

I eat far more than I put in my pail

it remains nearly empty

so tomorrow

there will be no cobbler

or biscuit jam

tonight

there will be no need of dinner

or dessert

only a cool bath gently run

to soothe my fiery skin

the search was everything

it filled me and fed me

left me weary

in the nicest of ways

sleep will surely come

claiming me for its restful own…

*

Tucked away somewhere

Are some yellowed pages bearing faded words

That I should wander through

It is time

To take them out of hiding

Unfold them

And see if anything has ripened

Sweet enough

To fill a nearly empty pail

Perhaps,

In the morning

We shall have biscuits with blackberry jam

And in the evening

Warm cobbler with cold ice cream

And after that,

When the stars come forth to shine

And the fireflies begin their nightly tango

We shall sleep the weary peaceful sleep

Of being ten years old

At the end of a perfect summer’s day

****

ellie894 June 4, 2019

long lemonade days…

I was awake for a long while in the night, traveling my thoughts…

When I finally fell into sleep I found myself nearly a part of the sky. I swayed with the motion of the air, a vast ocean waiting so very far below to catch me if I should tumble…and rock me amongst the cresting waves…

So it is that I am tired and a little lost in the cool woods this morning. They wrap around me gently, rather like a long hoped for embrace…a well worn path, the sandy spots full of ant lion funnels, and the alcove where the creek begins to form the lake from a spring that truly never ends…

It took me three rounds before Jack and Bo would settle enough to sit and wonder at lakeside. It is cooler than it should be for the first of August in Texas! I will just be grateful. Very grateful… There are at least two more months of heat ahead.

I am ever so sad when the words don’t come…when they float just out of reach so that I cannot quite gather them…or they hide altogether, crushed under last year’s leaves.

The birds are not singing. Perhaps they are as parched and quiet as I am. The flowers have disappeared as the dry days follow one upon another. August has arrived to simmer and stew all once more, in the laziness of iced tea and long lemonade days spent in the shady rhythm of a back porch swing.

I lift my eyes to the shelter of the pines and beyond them to the blue that begs to be explored. Softness cradles my heart. I love the way morning sun catches in a spider’s web making it glisten with the magic of a day yet to be lived and a night left behind in shadow.

Later it may all give way to a whispered breeze that breaks the silence of a hot afternoon. The ice gladly melts, leaving trails of abandoned moisture to race upon the clear cold glass.

And so, my thoughts turn to tales as they so often do…there is something special about August reading though…to abandon oneself to a story well told, captivating in every detail. When the cicadas hum and buzz in sleepy cadence and the birds cannot bring themselves to share… I want to listen… I want to still my heart and soul… I want to read…to get lost in reading…

I revel in precious books I’ve held a thousand times! Their worded treasure has become a part of me. And yet, the adventure of the new beckons me forth to the cliff’s edge…let go of the jagged rocks he calls! Take to the sky she echoes… take to the sky… and discover your wings…

And, what of love you ask…where does it reside in the dog days of summer…where it will I suppose…as love always finds a way…just as the light catches in the simplest of places to give the promise of something more…so too does love…to sweeten the lemonade and frost the glass…and just when you think you can’t take another sweltering moment…

the breeze stirs from across the water and within your heart…sending ripples of hope right through to the edges of you…where day dawns and night falls and you sail into the horizon of your sweetest dreams…come true…

****

ellie894 August 1, 2018

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.