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Archive for the ‘Eternal moments’ Category

Vignette

Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on February 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Snowfall overnight.  Only the streetlamps are bright, cloudy with a few stars.

Walking in tire tracks, I turn the corner on an untrammeled snowy road.  Four inches of unbroken snow blankets door to door and down the street.  No tire tracks, human, or animal prints.

Walking down the middle of the street, the snow glistens. The impossibly unplanned sparkles that dazzle even in low light.  At street end, the tracks of a car leaving for work breaks the spell.

Behind me, a solitary braid of footprints leads from where I once was. A lifetime in a glance.

Footprints made of water last no longer than those held by tidal sand—a presence momentarily registered on an endlessly changing canvas.

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Autumn triptych

Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Seasons, tagged , on October 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I

Bright burnt-orange and yellow leaves swirl off stories-high maple trees.

Some race upwards as others billow wide on a playful breeze.

Like children released at recess, the leaves seem set to begin a new journey. Summer days and nights in moonlit trees have passed.

Peerless blue sunny sky, the ephemera of autumn.

II

The sun has set but radiant light lingers about the tops of the trees.  Red-orange canopy doing a slow cha-cha in the evening breeze.

From my ground level office, I can see the changing garden.  No killing frost yet. Roots that steady and sink deep. Still-luminous Zinnias, gold and red.    

Agastache, licorice scented stems and leaves sag, laden with berry pink flowers.

A perfectly timed V-formation of geese passes through.

High in the sky, the maple dresses for autumn as the garden mellows into rich color.

As above, so below.

III

An afternoon walk in a suburban neighborhood.  Halloween bling every few houses.

A mild breeze, temps in the 70’s, and color on the trees the likes of which have not been seen for years.

Walking the dogs, we scuttle with dry but still colorful leaves down the street.

The perfection is timeless, seamlessness between self and sky that renders human transparent.

These are the moments for which we take on skin—to see and sense with no understanding, no cause or conclusion, nothing but the transitory joy that Is.

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The Illusion of Earthbound (or—the view from a flying machine)

Posted in Airplanes, Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on October 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The airport. Untethered, reasons differing, luggage struggles, life-worn faces, regardless of age.

Sunrise behind stratocumulus cliffs over an ocean of clouds.

The pilot announces a two hour and 52-minute flight at 38,000 feet.  Plenty of height for perspective.

Excellent cloud day. Cotton soup with tiny towns below.  Cloud handshakes reach across the aisle and march on to the west.

Bejeweled circuit board subdivisions far below.

Hills and slopes stretch into prehistoric fossilized leaf prints.

Piano key agricultural strips.

Popcorn clouds dense, render deep and dappled shadows on a bone-dry landscape.

Souls aloft for this moment, in this lifetime, sustained by a metal can.  The illusion of earthbound.

Clouds changing and taking form.  Despite its seemed impermanence, water vapor is as close to immortal as anything on this planet.

Below, one cannot resist the thought, when looking at sprawling, spreading cities, that humans are an invasive species.

Modern agriculture:  Wind farm

The perfectly rendered eye of a hippopotamus in the landscape, then quickly covered by clouds.

Dense, vaporous clouds below the horizon, bright blue sky above.  Horizontal duality as far as the eye can see.

The broken routine—by travel, by incursion—specializes the moment outside of our routinized world.  Frees the mind to the new scope, what is arriving on the horizon.

If I had my way, I would traipse this firmament more often, exist outside the tunnel, work at seeing the invisible patterns to better describe what is visible to me.

Escarpments licking down plateaus, red orange against limestone yellow, grand anthropomorphic illustrations, courtesy of erosion.

Reverie concluded. The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign to begin our descent.

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And So We go

Posted in Eternal moments, Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on April 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Leaving this place today.

Leaving is always bittersweet to me.  A feeling I should not go, this is home, a wild desperate thought of stopping in my tracks to stay.

Time turned, the deep life and memory of this place lifted and wafted away on every summer day since I left. Nothing remains but the energy carried by me as memory.

Artifacts beckon, touchstones where I grew up, what I thought. Yet, like the faded memory of my mother, all that remains is the essence I confer.  This place no longer reflects me.

The lives of others are lived here now. Their time, like mine, just passing through.

Life is an extraordinary experience, each day its own hello and goodbye. And today, to this place, I say goodbye for now.

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St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning

Posted in Eternal moments, Festivals, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on March 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

A jet climbs the vault of the sky, streaming a hot pink contrail just above bright Venus at sunrise.

Bare trees silhouetted against deep pink clouds. The earth gracefully turns toward its guiding star.

Birds cleave the sky far below the air traffic—a cacophony of song not present even two days ago.

The airplane passes overhead and beyond, disappearing in the western sky leaving a pink track parallel to an aircraft that passed not long before.

The day has begun.

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The Snow Blankets

Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, time, weather, tagged , , , on January 8, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Glistening clouds of snow blanket the ground, the roof, the roads.

You may know these mornings.  Quiet, a dog barking in the distance, conifers silhouette a deep blue sky brightening before an orange-stroked sunrise.

Winter storms pass, leaving moments of unsullied stillness. Beneath the blanket and cold, some things sleep, some perish, some wait – much like memory. Other than the energy of our blood and bones we are only memory. Some memories finally pass, others will only pass when we do.

The sun will soon dazzle the landscape with its untrammeled brilliance, blinding thought to anything but glory. Then the blankets will fray to fluid and reveal again what lies there. 

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Shadows

Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, tagged , , on November 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

The shadows of bush branches outside the window fall on the sunlit wall by my table. 

The wind waves and they dance on the wall and along the tabletop.

Life is in those shadows.  Seasons pass, decades, and the shadows send a signal of what is present somewhere, but not within my reach.

Their impression, more fluid than their being, is energy just passing through of the solid object upon which we are more inclined to focus.

Shadows can traverse time, forward and backward, infinite. While the object that opens that door is even now withering to autumn.

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Spring Forward

Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, time, tagged on March 14, 2021| 1 Comment »

A single gull wends eastward against pink clouds underlit by the rising sun.

Perhaps it is Jonathon, dropping in for a visit to try a few new moves.

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Baby Steps

Posted in Eternal moments, Reflections on the everyday, time, Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I watch my hands finger the small bootie once worn by my children. The tag inside reads “6/12 months.” This was a first shoe for two toddlers just learning to walk.

I see my fingers move, thinning, loose skin on the back of my hands piling up and relaxing. These are ‘doing’ hands.  I have thoughtlessly relied upon them forever.

My children are decades into their lives now. One grew into shoes he used to walk completely out of my life.  The other wears shoes that keep him in motion, learning, building, and exploring.

And here remains the small bootie and the hands that helped those tiny feet touch down on the earth so very long ago.

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Owl Moon

Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, tagged , on September 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Just past full, a moon so bright only major constellations are visible.

Early morning, autumn in the air, just me and the night critters.  An opossum and I startled each other mid-street.

Rounding a corner, an unmistakable call.  Somewhere in the trees to my left was a Great Horned Owl, I stopped. Soon, I realized I was  listening in the wrong direction.  The call was coming from my right, a greenbelt behind a string of low-slung ranch-style homes.

Then I caught on.  It was a duet, the conversation of two Great Horned Owls, with me in the middle.  I listened in for some time before the call to my left threaded off as it flew quietly through the dark.  My cue to leave.

There is magic in the language of owls.  And a kind of hope, at least so says author Jane Yolen.  “The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining Owl Moon.”

 

 

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