Haiku My Heart, Simplicity

And there you have my haiku for this week. It was inspired by rebecca's posts and links on the love of paper. I have no artistic ability to cut and shape paper but paper is sacred to me, as is ink. I am rich if I have good paper and a fine pen.
I am rich.

It is Friday and chilly to our North Florida blood. We knew this day would come but we had almost given up hope. Summer has been a thick weight of heat which pinned us to our ground and kept us inside and on shady porches. We have been drenched and dressed in sweat for months but we have had rain this summer and that was our saving grace and so I must mention it. I have never seen the beauty berry as it is this year.

There is one growing across the street and last night, as the sun set, I saw that plant lit with gold and put Owen on my hip and grabbed the camera and crossed the road and stole its picture.


The hurricane lilies are blooming a glory I've never seen before either. My next door neighbor's yard is a field of them, they are a red flock of flowers, standing up in great numbers, soldiers rooted in their fancy uniforms, offering nectar for the hummingbirds. Almost every yard in Lloyd has them and when I see them growing in a vacant place, I know a house stood there once. A history marker, newly erected each year to remind us of what was, to allow our minds to fill in the picture of what is gone but shimmers still somehow in ghostly outline.

Well. It is morning. Owen will be here soon. I am wearing long sleeves. The roosters are crowing back and forth between the yards. The whatever-it-is that bloomed on my hip/flank and made me almost crazy with itching has grown less angry red and is smaller in size. Yesterday it was so ugly I would not have posted pictures for fear I would be called insane to not go to a doctor. It still itches but I no longer think it will eat my flesh.

The banana spider has died for the winter. That is how I am thinking of her disappearance. She will be born again next summer in the form of one of her babies. The seasons roll and I am shocked every time a new one appears, even as I expect it. The spiders die, the beauty berry blooms, the air grows cooler, the boy gets bigger, the life and heart grow fuller, the light shines brighter, I grow more quiet, I know what I need.

All of this. I need all of this.

And pen and paper.

Amen.

Happy Friday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon

Click on the picture for rebecca's haiku links.