Seasons Of Life

Things have shifted, and now I am detaching from some things and moving towards some new ones. A time of nervous stomachs and pleasant anticipation, a period of feeling overwhelmed and unprepared, a stretch of unsettled hours, of feeling my age, of pushing out again into the waters of hope, watching the clouds and the horizon.

It’s lighter in the mornings now, and I see the bicyclist on the shoulder of the road each day on the way to work. I lift my hand and breathe a blessing and a prayer, and as always, I wonder where he is going and what he does and how his day and his life will unspool.

When I arrived at work today, I scattered a few crackers beneath the tree where I park, and I was surprised by two juncoes who were sitting together on a low branch. They called attention to themselves with their abbreviated songs, and I was surprised to see how close they allowed me to get to them without fleeing. I turned to leave and noticed a large purplish leaf hanging just in front of me, heavy with raindrops. I lifted my finger and touched the clear pendant at the pointed tip of the leaf, and the drop settled onto the same spot accustomed to phone keys and computer keys and elevator buttons, and I lifted it to my mouth and took it in. Nothing is wasted in this universe, even when I am unaware of it.

Last night we watched a short film, a beautiful and moving piece called Hole in the Paper Sky, about a misanthropic math genius and his friendship with a doomed laboratory dog. I went to sleep thinking about it, and I thought of it again this morning when Jinx came to me and stretched and greeted me with his happy eyes and vibrating body.

Things have shifted now, and the day will take me in a direction I cannot yet read. This is the way of things.

~ S.K. Orr