Last night’s sunset.
I came outside to… What? Pull weeds? Move water. Having moved water, I turn and look for the first time at this moment, in this bed, with these pink lilies in the pond. This exact angle, this particular wind, this singular day. One singular raindrop lands on my arm. Just the one.
Quite awhile after that one raindrop, a few more. This is exactly how much rain fell today: enough to spatter the dust on the lid of the ancestral Turkish grill.
Enough with the daylilies, alright? But I can’t help myself. Backlit with the setting sun it’s a different garden from the one it was at noon.
I find myself praying please, give us this year, let this one mesa, this place, this valley, be safe, for one year, from all that could befall it. Please let us have this one summer free from all the natural and manmade disasters that may befall us, that may befall each of us, any time, any moment, any day. And please let me be safe from my pride and my folly. Everything is quiet out here, as it should be, the tortoise in his yard, the car, the yurt, closed up. I’m all set to make the most of this breezy, cloudy day, without a host of worries.
Look what I caught today! Bug on a weed.
I have a pretty high threshold of tolerance with insects, and I don’t pretend to think they’re vicious, or assign them motivation, they’re just feeding or defending; nevertheless, I take care of me and mine, and when I have to I will kill them. When I don’t, I will free them, celebrate them, photograph them, leave them on their way. But when they cause me pain, I’ll kill them, to prevent it happening again. The irony, I am reading “The Voice of the Infinite in the Small,” at last, pulled from the wall of books last night, from the meaning to read pile. All about changing our relationship with insects from one of aversion and control to one of compassion and wonder. And then I am stung by a wasp. But not a bee.
Oldbee, with tattered wings. And Newbee, on the left.
Bashful.
Life is so short. I feel the soft warm tongue licking salt off my fingers from potato chips in fish dip. Who feels that? Dog tongues lapping water from a pond, who sees this with quite the poignancy I do? I suppose it’s true: prayer is simply being uniquely you.
At the exact time when the outside temperature is just cooler than the in, I open doors and windows, no sooner.