Floating

I am learning something from this pond on the Two Hundred Acre Wood, this hidden place which is like any watery tributary with its currents and tides and seasons.

First there is springtime, when the water gurgles and roars after several months spent sleeping under a thick blanket of ice. Then there is summer with its waterlilies, pond weed and chanting frogs at sundown. Next comes autumn when the lily pads turn russet and the water flows gold and purple by turns in the late sunlight. Then comes another winter, slow deep breathing and gelid dreaming thoughts until the wheel turns again.

One would think that there is peace of mind in this third age, quietness, docility and resignation, but that is not so, at least for me. If anything, there is a greater passion for life, and there is much less patience with sameness, thoughtlessness and cruelty - there is emotional intensity and an obdurate resistance to sheepish conventions which is gentle or furious according to need and circumstances. There is wildness and a fierce embracing of reality.

I can no longer scale mountains and run blazing toward distant horizons at the speed of light, but I can be a pond, and a pond would be a good thing to be - indeed, I am already half way there. Like a pond, I have currents and tides and seasons, and I have a song to sing here - as soon as I figure out the words. In the meantime, I shall hum...