Posted in Eternal moments, Lived meaning, Reflections on the everyday, tagged sunrise, time on October 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »
A sunrise no words can match or quench.
Burning apricot flung across fading shade of night.
Rain from a cloudless, effortless sky deepens color on the eastern horizon.
Washing out the past and blazing the trail for the only thing we really have—this day.
Posted in Eternal moments, Parents and children, Reflections on the everyday, tagged consciousness, time on May 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »
On Saturday morning while running errands, I detoured through the local small town community park. Neatly maintained pickle ball courts and baseball fields, a well-appointed playground. Gazebos for picnicking, and a small amphitheater for outdoor concerts. Early enough that the baseball crowd had not yet arrived.
A van pulled in. What appeared to be a mom and her perhaps seven-year-old son exited the vehicle and headed to the playground.
Mom looked straight ahead, her posture tired, a chronic condition of parenthood. Walking a few feet away, the boy scampered excitedly, looking expectantly at mom.
A moment in time. The poignancy of older and younger. One whose path has led them here, and one whose path is being formed in this moment.
Two sides of life, both ordinary and extraordinary, in an instant.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Journey, Snow 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.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Seasons, tagged autumn, autumn colour 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.
Posted in Airplanes, Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Airplane travel, room with a view 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.
Posted in Eternal moments, Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Home, memory, Travel 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.
Posted in Eternal moments, Festivals, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Clouds, St. Patrick's Day, sunrise 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.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Reflections on the everyday, time, weather, tagged consciousness, memory, Snow, time 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.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, tagged autumn, shadows, time 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.
Posted in Eternal moments, Nature, time, tagged sunrise 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.
Shouldn't...but Do 