Dear Maria,
Thanks for lunch the other day.
I know the demands on your schedule—hope my recently buoyed mood was a bit of
an antidote for the stress you have been battling. This morning I’m sitting at
my desk, watching the elms shimmy in the wind. Storms forecast for later today,
and the warm humid air earlier pretty much gave that likelihood away.
Most of us around here had a
chance to experience a Saturday a week ago that was so sublime that there
simply could not have been any violence in the world that day. Yes, I know
better, but hope flings itself eternally forward.
The great hawk—the one of
big-shoulders, larger than any hawk I’ve seen before—made another visit the
other morning. His seasonal rotation through my little section of the urban
forest means that nothing moves while he is in flight and squirrels will be
killed. But he is especially attuned to the weather and was about only while we
had that cool spell. The smaller hawk that has been announcing sunrise all
summer returned a few days ago after being knocked off its perch by the master
of these skies.
The first flowers on a loropetalum have
appeared this weekend. Not on one of the 4-footers out back that have been in
the ground four summers. Instead, out front on one of the six added this May.
The runt of that litter that has suffered all summer and that I had most doubts
about. Made my morning as I tugged up weeds and Johnson grass. The elms are
heavy with flowers as they were last year—another harbinger of a tough winter
of cold and ice?
The tether that links me to the calendar
remains, but knotted more by the agenda of other’s than my daily or even weekly
rhythms. I know it is Homecoming Week at Ashley Ridge, and I can laugh about it
being time for me to be finishing up with Macbeth and touting the witches’ brew
as a recipe for Halloween. Yesterday, I went out to the mailbox and checked
even as I knew since it was my kid brother’s birthday that it was Columbus Day.
I continue to tell my mother that I am
letting the universe come to me. I tell my former colleagues that I never feel
the need to catch my breath. Life meanders along, the sunrises and sunsets to
float me downstream.
Maybe you are drinking a cup of coffee,
feet up, sitting on the porch as you read this letter. I like to think so.
As it goes, and yours,
srk
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