She is weary of deep snow and icy cold, and sometimes, she is even a little tired of the color blue, no matter how intensely blue the sky is or snowdrifts or spruce trees or the cast iron crane out on the deck. Its migratory kin have been gone for months, but our splendid metal bird is frozen in place, and it is well and truly stuck until springtime rolls around again. I like looking at it.
There are some lovely words for blue in the English language: azure, beryl, cerulean, cobalt, indigo, lapis lazuli, sapphire, turquoise, ultramarine. She recites them like a litany under her breath as she looks out at her sleeping garden with mug in hand or breaks a trail into the woods.
Just when she decides that she is all wintered out and will not sketch another icicle or snap another photo of such things, another eloquent winter tableau presents itself to the eye. Something curved or fragile or delicately robed in snow shows up and begs rapt and focused attention. Glossy bubbles dance in the icicles above a frozen creek in the Lanark highlands. Snow crystals adorn the evergreens over her head and turn them into jeweled wonders. As she walks, faded and tattered oak leaves flutter down to lie on the trail at her feet. Pine and spruce cones cast vivid blue shadows in pools of early morning sunlight. Is there anything on the planet as fine as the scent of blue spruce boughs in February?
Small and perfect, complete within itself, each tableau conveys an elemental peace and balance, lowers the blood pressure and stills the breathing, returns her eyes and focus to simplicity and grace and assent. For a minute or two, pain subsides and balance returns. It is a miracle that she is standing here at all, and her fleeting interval on the edge of the woods has to be enough. It is enough, and it is much more than enough.
Worlds great and small everywhere, worlds within and worlds without, and every one is a wonder to behold and remember and love with her eyes. Surely, she can do this for a little while longer.
4 comments:
Thanks for words of beauty, while underneath there's the ongoing battle, the struggle of life itself...which will continue, which will cycle around, and which gives each of us strength in the face of the other cycle of returning to inert form (only another facet of life.)
Each ramble holds sacred steps...I applaud your courage and vision.
Yes - surely - you can :) finding the magic in each day, as you do, wrapping yourself in the love of friends, and the beauty that you are able to see in it... We are way behind in our snowfall here, think it all went north and east. The landscape is dry brown, grey and bare... I would love to see what you see. Indeed the snow is comforting to me and would "lower the blood pressure" LOL... ;) Guess it's a matter of perspective... So I wrap myself in my shawl and enter the inner realms and hope for the Spring snows to come... Hugs...
Your postings are so beautiful and inspirational.
Post a Comment