Well, perhaps it is too early.

I woke and started thinking and that’s not the way to peacefully get back to sleep.

So I settled in to the comfy chair where I could see Jupiter keeping awake with me. Jupiter is a friendly presence and sings quietly to himself as I watch or work or wonder.

Then BOOM! the old crescent moon pops into view.
Hello, Lady.
She is riding low of due east right now, and she is so old and it is so close to the solstice that she is simply a letter C, rocking back only slightly, to point at a sun that is nearly rising and nearly at the northernmost part of that journey.

I’m grateful for the company, Jupiter and Moon.

It’s not too early

but it’s before the rest of the household.
Max and I are listening to the rain water drip off the roof onto leaves below
and some birdies.

He is lying between my legs on top of the soft grey blanket.
His eyelids are drooping and he’s snoring very softly.

This is a very nice place for puppies.

I am healthy

I am healthy and whole and fed and sheltered and privileged and educated and engaged in meaningful work which I enjoy and loved by a beautiful family of extraordinary people.

Why do I feel useless and afraid and lonely?

I believe in my heart that when I am about to make a breakthrough of some kind, all of the homunculae in my mind — who cling to the familiar — throw every obstacle they can think of into my path to stall the journey.

Back into the fray, locked for generations into a battle against my arch-enemy: myself.

An infant dragon

An infant dragon has come to be fostered,
and I am working very hard to listen
to the puffs and ignitions and tiny mewling sounds.

It is vital that they become exactly who they are inside
and not what I expect them to be.

Yet. It is vital that they become One whom I respect and regard,
one who has incorporated the values of my clan and village.

Oh, Nature!
Oh, Nurture!

Well. If they are good, that will be enough.
If they are kind, that will be everything.

Perfect Fullness

And full gratitude.
Lilacs for the Lady of Mystery,
Moments for the Lord of the Wild.

Spirits of earth and air and fire and water
who come with gladness and good intent,
welcome.

Yet this table has five sides.

Let us not forget ever the element of surprise,
or of humanity,
or of spirit.

Let us not forget to set an empty place
for the one who is not yet — or who is no longer — here.

Concerning Spelling

Which, by the way, is exactly the same word, the one for putting the letters in order and the one for doing magic because putting the letters in order is absolutely magical…

I wonder if the “i” which is not in “carillon” where I expected it to be for about fifty years is hiding out in “parishioner”.

Good will and an excavator

a tiny stretch of road,
a filled trench
lumps and bumps of construction materials worked into the now gentle landscape,

Most of all, two footers,
two posts,
beams delivered in their natural state.

And amid all of that, they took a moment
to make something lovely for me.

In dawnlight

That’s Jupiter in the early glow
or Saturn
I don’t know which, and it will take earlier and earlier mornings to see them well enough to discern which is which by position
and to be quite honest, I am not interested in getting up earlier than this.

Though I do miss rising this early.

There’s a peace to pre-dawn.

A waiting.

But the world wishes me to teach night school, and if that’s where the students are, that’s where I shall go.

For now.