Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The morning after

The time has come, as it always does, to clean out the yard. Despite fatigue and cold, you clear it out. Leaves and bark and broken pieces of terra cotta and pine cones and who even knows what else. You make an impressive list of all that you find, all that you left for nature to deal with. Apparently nature needs more time than just one winter. Or maybe you didn't really leave things so that she could.

So you actually do the work that you do not like to do. Clearing the way. All things natural in a small pile under an ancient maple. All things unnatural disposed of. You relinquish a mess, a mess that you didn't even see as it piled up.

You do not awaken to an empty yard as you thought you would. It has become, overnight, a field of grace. A place where flowers you cannot name will grow.

No comments: