Examine
I have known crows in the sunlight, fruit flies on figs, a hug, moments before leaving love in another country. And I have known return to a land with a million things to do. I have known abundance that comes with the dropping of fruit. I have known how chickens and sparrowsl search the ground. I have known the missing center of figs. And I know how to gather, how to dry and freeze.
Harvest should always be the first order taken.
There must be a way that I have missed, somehow an ability to let the worry drift away, to step from task to task, to organize, to know what should come first. Though should is a word I prefer not to use, and even prefer a bit dualistic for my tastes, but I think you know what I mean.
When God gives the gifts of fruit, give thanks for the tree will be bare again, not because the tree knows time. The tree knows conditions.
Perhaps we all know conditions that are ripe for the growing of our souls, for the dropping of personality, for this gift we might give to the ants of circumstance, for the way birds might take what we think is the center, for the way everything works together constantly. For moments like this to better understand my brothers and sisters, for everybody has time when the view outside the window overwhelms.
They call it chipping in golf. Getting closer. Michelangelo called it chipping away when making David. Junkies call it chipping when somebody does just enough heroin to get by.
I have piles of wood outside the back door that can be made into boxes and tables and I have a fence on Needle Street where people toss plastic bottles that might be filled with seedlings.
But alas…before I go on. And on. And on.
I’ve taken a vow. The land is a gift, a free guru. I have agreed not to start any new projects, to take care of what I have, to measure the space I hesitatingly call my land. For this land is meant to offer what I cannot see on my own. This land is meant to excite the senses, to at some point, with enough interaction, to go beyond the senses to the soul, to strip away any false dependency, to remove the veil of certainty, to crush the need to be right.
And what comes to me is this, the peanut butter tree growing above a dog I loved so much, the way my dad’s body burned in an incinerator, the way many bodies are injected with formaldehyde, the way I learned that the earth can work with any disease, so that a buried body does not affect the dirt around it, so that this flesh is converted into nutrients that heal.
Somewhere a doctor realized he could stop the decomposition process. Soldiers sent to fight could be honored by coming home dead but in pristine condition and what the formaldehyde did to the earth was never considered. I think there is something to be pulled from this, to be examined, to look at and ask, to sit with.
Today I will consider before jumping in. I will walk the spaces where the land teaches me. I will ask. And there will be life that I cut and feed to other life. There will be design. There will be change. I will ask the ants not to come into the kitchen.
I’ll begin the fall garden outside the back door. I’ll consider when love comes from Toronto. I’ll consider September. I’ll consider syllables.
I know that sometimes when the mind fills with a million things to do, the best thing is to sit. To watch. To examine. To consider. I know that the drops glistening on the leaf of the ice cream bean is a gift between me and God. I know my window holds a vision that I decide. I know that I say the same things over and over. And I know that today I will approach this late morning with curiosity and wonder rather than fear and trepidation.