Last whispers of Spring

The numbing resonation of lawn mowers, pitched into harmony with buzzing insects trapped indoors wraps around me as I lay under covers. A sad sick feeling again, one I can’t seem to escape. There is comfort, however, in long grasses, in the smattering of various mushrooms that punctuate soft places in the earth. I’m patchy like the shedding coats of donkeys; almost down to bare skin, the freedom of their summer hide awaits a tedious and shaggy undertaking. Pieces of me are lost in sleepless nights. Tossing about on strange mental planes, and encountering whispers of some troubled past, I’m sent from aggravated waking back to nightmarish dreams. And the sun sets on another sleepy day. She sings her final song of red and crimson, the burst of life and beauty before relinquishing her path to starry skies. It threatened to rain all afternoon, and the promise has as yet remained unfulfilled as evening takes its dreamy stroll toward night.

I think about the happiness of mushrooms, existing peaceably in a group of all stages of development. Like silent, immobile herds of elephants, with tiny mushroom-calves protected around the heels of their mothers. They all have a little smile to share, a little triumph over decay, a little secret about the happenings of a wet June night. These are the things I wish for my own community; the happiness, smiles, triumphs, and secrets. These are the things I wish for myself.

Looking in the mirror I seem a bit worn, a bit more elf-like than usual. Sometimes I second guess the new direction I’ve taken; did I sacrifice something valuable and terribly needed in the world? I’m actually feeling like a certain kind of teen again. Sleeping and waking, I trip, dance and plod through living, forgetting some passages of the music, changing beats, striking up different verses to complicate and enliven the heartbeat finding its own rhythm within. I hope the good choices have out weighed the bad, and I hope I can learn to be true to the gifts bestowed upon me, everyday.