When my mother closes her eyes at night, she is visited by the faces of strangers. Her mind relaxes and faces appear and slide over, smiling faces; sad faces; all of them new to her. She watches their eyes as they drift by. They watch her back. In the morning, they crowd around her before fading into the deepening red background of her eyelids. The light seeps through her window shades and the strangers laugh, or cry, or turn away. My mother wakes up each day with company. She never faces a day alone.
New. All new. Leaf, bud, shoot,
Trillium closed like candles,
Sizzled sideways until three flames
Arched from the center
Atop three broad leaves;
A stem floats this symmetry,
Like fingertips holding a
Champagne glass
(The Marie Antoinette’s Breast Kind).
New, the resurrected dance, bubble, gurgle
Of our little creek.
Attus’ warm breath
Lifting the hem of my dress
And tangling my hair.
New as every morning,
But especially in Spring.
The blossoming trees show up
Wearing wild bonnets,
New, with the fragrance
Of promised fruit.
A trick of light that only happens in autumn, late autumn, sets this tree on fire, every afternoon as I get in my car to head home. The sunlight completely ignores the other trees and hits only this one with it’s high beams.
It is good to pause and stand in utter awe after the day bruises us with it’s ridiculously tiny fists. It is good to stand transfixed in light and color, shaking like branches off the frustrations that make life so beautiful and so silly. Shedding the little things we shouldn’t worry about: Those shattered pieces we pick up every day; those streaks of color that fall just outside our vision; the stuff we can’t keep intact and shouldn’t try. The things we cling to, hold up, compare, rename, classify, judge and collect.
Today, even against the stark snowy backdrop, the tree looked cement gray. I am reminded of Bukowski and Hinton and the reality of magic.
Sunday afternoon driveway roar traffic in bursts, jake brake logging trucks, I hope it isn’t the one I cut off Friday afternoon, I didn’t see the school bus, and I saw the trucker’s chuckle behind his windshield, behind glass, like a painting, breezy Sunday afternoon at the park, but here no lake nor swimmers nor the same lady cast in every female role, no gentlemen in high black hats, just the cars and trucks drifting by, vacationers packed their t-shirts and plastic shoes, while wistful eyes crept to the crisp blue ocean reflecting a perfectly matching sky and now they sadly roll toward the valley,
Tomorrow is a school day.
Me, I sit, tilting back in a red metal chair among the trees just barely singed with the fire of decay. Wispy seeds, like fairies, dance around my shoulder. They kiss my knees and celebrate my unmatching socks. The deer mice watch us from their little holes and the leaves are alive with chipping squirrels and squawking jays the color of twilight. This proportion of breeze and sunshine rival the best of July’s magic. The shadows lie stretched out across the ferny clay. They creep closer to my red chair. But for now, my head is warm and the ants at my feet are doing all the work.
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey; with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end. And the thing was to get to that end: success or whatever it is- or maybe heaven, after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played.”
Celebrating Mortality
