we have adopted this tree and should we ever drive there and find it is gone we will likely be pretty devastated.
we have a relationship with this tree in this farmfield on this road. we never tire of it. somehow it keeps us centered.
this beautiful tree stands there – as weather systems spin around it and time travels on and on, we see the stalwart and steady tree – withstanding it all. it is not ON the mountain in the raging wind, the swirling snowstorm, the beating rain, the ice and drought and cold and heat and night and day and fog – it IS the mountain.
lessons on highway h.
“be the mountain,” the tree calls to us, “be the mountain.”
and before we drive off, “just like me, like me, like me,” it adds, echoing into the wind.
“do you know that there’s still a chance for you ’cause there’s a spark in you? you just gotta ignite the light and let it shine just own the night like the 4th of july ’cause baby, you’re a firework come on, show ’em what you’re worth make ’em go, oh as you shoot across the sky baby, you’re a firework come on, let your colors burst make ’em go, oh“
even as it wanes, it is clearly beautiful. stunning, really. the 0230-pantone-chart-heading-toward-rhodamine-red bloom is attracting attention, its droop the stuff of grand success. as its petals drop to the ground, one-by-one, it feeds next and next. and the flowers nearby sigh, “ohhhh.” and they know, despite anything – age, health, roadblocks, lack of nutrients, overabundance of tending worry, calendar of blooming-period – that there is still a chance for them.
artistry never stops. no matter. its imperative – to bloom – to shoot across the sky – is ceaseless, a perpetual poking, an unfaltering urge. the chance is never gone, never erased, never doused-left-with-no-embers.
i listened to a guided meditation a few days ago. it was merely four minutes long. “the mountain”, it – in only four minutes – made surprising tears stream down my face. its message…to be grounded and solid – rooted – just as a mountain – in all that is going on around you, regardless. to stand in it all. like a mountain. those four minutes were profound.
there are things i would choose to be different right now. many things. this season has been somewhat fraught. yet, there are reasons to be grounded, rooted, to stand here and just wait, to ride it out, to hold on.
all around us were orchids in shatter-the-silence gorgeous bloom. all around us was greenery, textural and rich. all around us were beginnings, closed buds with pent-up energy waiting to burst onto the stage-of-earth.
but this leaning-to-rhodamine caught my eye, in its waning no less, no more than the others. and it whispered, “baby, you’re a firework too.”
“even brighter than the moon, moon, moon it’s always been inside of you, you, you and now it’s time to let it through ’cause baby you’re a firework come on, show ’em what you’re worth make ’em go, oh as you shoot across the sky baby, you’re a firework come on, let your colors burst make ’em go, oh“
reverse threading 