The impermanent grace of everything.
All the lives I love in my hands...
Hello dear ones, before I begin writing of multi-hued spring highlights and lowlights I must send an enormous thank you for every kind message sent after my last harried post. I felt every word, wrapped them carefully in folds of my heart to carry as comfort for the days that followed. Truly, my deepest thanks to you all. You are treasured gifts.
Worry not, these last seven days have been less dramatic, not all have brought a smile but smiles have been found in the blooming of everything in a hurry to bloom. In the madness that is March weather I have walked the lanes around the hill, even—once—ventured through the forest. Not as often as I’d have liked, though despite the loudness of life tumbling into the calm with punctual frequency and a certain dear old friend in need of me more than is usual I have felt warm spring sunshine, watched the many buds of wild plum and cherry, blackthorn and oak tremble in the warmth then shiver in a contrary north wind, chatted with feathered cherubs as they hurry about in the act of multiplying.
There is joy in the air as it teeters on Aprils days.
With less words, no panic causing cattle, scattered sheep or errant chickens, no damages to property or debilitating exhaustion I send you a week in more images than usual; the first week of spring.
Remembering even a very recent time prior to this one—ever grateful that there still are times—I realise, with heavy hearted acceptance of the inevitable, this year, the last few weeks particularly, my dear old friend is fading at a speed I am unable to halt. He is no longer luminous. His already small existence has become so diminished it is contained in little more than a constant replay of ephemeral ghosts. Colour, shape, the details we gather in our vision and accept without the merest thought to our good fortune of the ability to do so are now, for him, condensed into a repetition of memories, a life past of phantoms in various hues of grey he no longer recognises, they blur before he is able to recount the story they made. I invent time I don’t have for him alone, every day possible, listen to his voice no longer able to find or form the words he wants to say. I am fearful for him but cannot show my fear, hold his life in my hands because he trusts that I can though I am clueless as to how I can change what is surely, now, written in a chapter that I will read too soon because, suddenly he is very old. Not simply ageing but hurtling at a critical unstoppable, perfidious pace towards whatever reverence awaits him, his life hangs before him in all the nuances it has taken to create, they are no longer tangible threads of days, they are dispersing, waiting in that next place for him to gather up in death.
He feels no fear as I do for both myself and him. He is in every way gracious, a gentleman, accepting.
I will call again tomorrow.
I hope his good heart still beats.
I hope I have time to learn more of his grace.
Briefly - All the blossoms on all the trees of certain names—ash, cherry, blackthorn, wild apple, oak—are taking, infuriatingly, far longer to open delicate petaled flowers than is usual. There is a preoccupation towards holding on, to remaining tightly closed and I wonder what secret they know—because trees always do know secrets—that I don’t.
No matter that spring pandemonium is hesitant, it is portent now, at this moment, of a necessary calmative aura in a madly un-calm world.
Most mornings this week I am aware of being followed by tiny winged creatures.
On a windowsill—high enough to be well outside the danger zone of our one remaining feline predator—I leave crumbs and seeds for small birds, I do this every day. The majority that visit are blue-tits, great-tits and finches—several varieties—all are beautiful, all are grateful, they return daily. I begin to recognise their sweet faces, their feathers, which are bossy, which are timid. Mostly they all fly away the second they see me, only to return when I leave again but the blue-tits, the tiniest of all those brave enough to visit, do not. They wait for more. They learn my daily routines, follow me when I leave the house to feed hens and sheep with buckets of grain. They know the contents are more plentiful, they know much will be missed in the morning melee of clucking and bleats.
Driving back to classes from another visit to my dear fading friend, a flash of lightening streaks across the sky in front of me. Two more follow—before I hear any sound of the thunder that must surely follow—they are the longest, most dazzling, most graceful discharges of electrostatic I have ever seen, the fine hair on my arms bristle, I count the seconds, one, two, three… feel the crash of thunder that follows so violently through the tyres of my car I wonder if the hill will still be where it should be when I return.
Almost all the days this week are touched by all seasons, as are so many in March, I am drenched and blow-dried equally.
In the dim light of morning—perhaps it was Thursday, perhaps Friday—carrying my buckets of grain through beloved trees, followed by tiny winged things, not all blue-tit shaped—bats are winging their hurried selves to rest—you startle me, as suddenly as I do you. We are both statues for many seconds, we stare, both wide-eyed, you at me, I at you. I, knowing now that I see the sound source, that I am in no danger, you with fear in your eyes. Though I try to tell you with mine there is no need, that you are welcome in my woods, here, please, have some grain… you leap into the gloaming and are gone.
I stand at the old wooden butchers block I use to prepare every meal for my family, it is scarred with the memory of each one.
Thirty-four years of meals…
It is where I sort nostalgia and hope, where I think—when time is allowing—of every moment I haven’t spent with the people I love, where I berate myself for all I should have said and didn’t, it is where I sort the mess of my days into words and poems. It is where I gather the silences and the joys into song. It is where I wish I could always bring you fresh oranges when all I have are dried plums.
At midday on Saturday, at the exact moment when the moon glides silently over the sun my daughter calls. It is a few seconds before I can speak and she knows the moment feels touched, not by so much grace or magic but by longing… ‘bientôt mama’ she whispers, ‘bientôt…’
“By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”
― Cormac McCarthy
With love and all the impermanent grace I can conjure,
Something I have loved this week;
I think most of us already know this story, it is always dignified, always devastating…
There are always many edges to beauty, Virginia Woolf was a master at finding more than most of us will ever even imagine possible. This post from
begins:Virginia Woolf was a literary force, a mind both brilliant and fragile, living perpetually on the edge of psychic unrest.
When my mother’s soul left this world, the skies were black and angry, thunder never ceased, and lightning , as if both Thor and Zeus went rogue across the sky. I always thought it was her, she did not want to go. Even though she was only an ember of her existence , she did not want to leave, to surrender her family to a world without her nurturing. She raged against the storm .She was the storm. Maybe the blossoms are biding their time .Your hill , waiting. Then bright with spectacular blooms, and the perfumed scents of spring , when it is Roger’s time. To have had your caring, beautiful, spirit. To have relished in your nurturing touch, is more than most of us could long for in our final days. “My ungraceful hands at work; the notes of all things ‘me’ “.
I am sure your heart feels the effect you have had on him. I only hope it brings you solace to hear the words from afar. So…”stand at the old wooden butchers block”… “gather the silences and the joys into song”. And stare down at those beautiful , beautiful hands.
“In the blue of fist light, a single blossom, petals open” …and the heavens guide his way home.
“The lady of the woods” 🙏
Your fading friend and the attentive way you hold his dissolving reminds me of my own mom, also now in a more rapid decline (expansion is maybe a better word?) She is becoming everything. Her movements slowing to integrate into all movements, her breath neither shallow nor deep, but gossamer and connected to everything. Though her eyes are still bright and twinkling as ever.
Thank you for sharing your land’s unfurling. I feel your own in each quiet turn of phrase. 🙏