Within, without

Today, the unofficial transition from tender to unbridled, the dandelions were cut. My fingers twisted rhythmically in the years first serious weeding, plying a rain-softened earth to relinquish her bounty of growth to the monogamy of a few select species. I'm reflecting on relationships, on the manner in which I have related to others, and how this has changed. I under went a startling change, a full right-angle turn, and now I'm comparing the two, the weft and weal of either strain, like a carpenter examining the cross-grandness of a wood destined to serve some major purpose to his livelihood.

I have a genius of a cat. He approaches people with a shy love, a longing to express this, a light touch upon the ground with which to carry him happily away at first mention of needlessness. He waits, and his feeling does not change, and he pours out love with chivalrous largess when the moment is right and he is noticed. Patience without resentment, feeling that is steadfast because it is rooted in genuine love, and giddy happiness without fantasy, wrapped in orange fur and smiling.

I have a little embryonic me inside, a tumbled stone with variant colors, reflectively smooth and nearly shapeless, but there, and trying. It shifts through the actions of a denser me, a one who grasps at outward forms and puts on the elaborate performances of a baroque theater. It judges and weighs, it reminds me, ever so faintly, of the path of goodness, the path that does not test or trial, and bids me take it. Dreams stud the firmament of my inner life like radiant dandelions, like pools of wonderful reflection on smooth stones. But in a way they're all an aside, a brief moment of existence, as ephemeral as the shaggy green that must be mowed today. Restriction cannot be the antidote to dreaminess and wildness, he answer must surely be the growing of a stronger tree, a sapling to forge ahead skyward and take the force away from the argument of antithesis.

I have but a brief moment with the dandelions, with the genius cat, with the developing me, and I hope to learn all I can from them.