All our window shades needed replacing in the living room. The resulting effect of a temporary half-curtain treatment has been a stunning revelation. What we see now is none of the usual (distractions?) of cars, or houses, or people walking by. Just the tops of everything.
Nothing to see from my usual sofa perch but an explosion of trees in springtime!
This “new” view* has been mesmerizing. I see trees in the distance I had never noticed before. Trees up close, like our crabapple waiting for the first warm day to finally pop. Overlays of moving green, and copper, and pink, and red. Thanks to the wee bit of sky poking through the branches, I can see that the trees are dancing!
And boy, can they dance!
It’s a breathtaking party going on out there.
Then just today I came across this poem by Mary Oliver, which made me go weak in the knees…
CAN YOU IMAGINE?
by Mary Oliver
“For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit — surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.”
The truth is, Ms. Oliver. I can.
I really can.
Photo: pdphoto.org
