This Day

A day of soul-blessing, blue sky, sheet-hanging, walk-taking, cabinet organizing, floor cleaning.
A day of Ozzie showing back up as if nothing, nothing at all had happened.
A day of talking to none but one soul, a friend who came by to give me some of his sprouting shallots to plant in my garden.
A day of watching the birds, both wild and somewhat tame. A day of watching the ducks paddle merrily about the algae-filled little pond, quacking with the prosaic joy of it. A day of finding six eggs in the relatively clean hen house. A day of taking all the trash and the recycle. A day of starting to listen to a new book narrated by Will Patterson. Let me tell you- any audio book narrated by that man is going to be a good listening experience. The book is Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier. I had read Cold Mountain back when everyone said you had to read it and it was, to be honest, a slog for me and I had never been tempted to read another of his books but seeing this edition narrated by Mr. Patton, I checked it out and was almost immediately taken in. So many beautiful lines that make me want to stop and write them down. I listen to my books when I am working in the house and the yard and walking and if the book is good enough, I often times find myself remembering the parts of it I listened to when I go about certain chores that I was listening to when I did them. This part of the garden I am taken back to this story, this part of the clothesline to that one. As if the ghosts of the words I've listened to linger where I heard them. Another sort of book-magic.
Word-magic.

So it's been that sort of day, and I picked beautiful greens from the garden and washed and washed them and chopped them up along with some of the turnip roots and one half a piece of bacon and one half of a Vidallia onion and I'm cooking them now with vinegar and soy sauce and salt and a little bit of sugar and lots of pepper.

And it's also been the sort of day where when I made up the bed with those sweet-smelling crisp sheets I did it slowly and very consciously and smoothed out every wrinkle so that tonight it will be the sort of night where bed will be even more of a bit of heaven to lay upon to have my dreams. 

May they be as sweet and funny as they were last night. 

Yes. A day of soul-blessing and the sort of day I've needed, with the sun shining down upon us all and the puddles and the birds and the redbuds beginning to bloom and the swelling tips of the wild azaleas and the moving of sap very slowly and yet truly in the trees and in me too, even as I get older every day, this sap of blood still moves, and the people have gathered at the church next door and I hear the drum beat its rhythm as I feel the rhythm of all of it from written word to seasons changing to water flowing to life in all of its forms and shapes and colors and quickness and lassitudes and turning, turning, turning of the planet in this universe of wonder so full of mystery and light and darkness and I am humbled and comforted and fearfully frightened and comforted again, over and over and over again. 

And will be until the rhythm calls me to become part of the whole once more.