The Clarity of 40

I sit and consider the stillness: gentle Vermont breeze, blue sky dripping onto green limbs that reach heavenward. Wasn't it only moments ago they held their leaves like tight little fists in the air, hoping for enough sun to nourish them? Scattered white puffs of cloud lazily change shape across their azul backdrop. Sound of a distant lawn mower, chatter of children hatching a plan to cool off at the snow-making pond or Pikes Falls. Dog comes back from somewhere, soaking wet and panting, a dogsmile lifting her black lips on either side of her lolling tongue. Wildflowers like jewels adorn the hillside between lawn and woods: Bull Thistles, Ox-eye Daisies, Bishop's Weed and Queen Anne's Lace populate the grasses and whisper summer's promises.

This kind of quiet, this kind of clarity, where every color is distinct, nothing bleeding into anything else but presenting itself in its wholeness, its real-ness...it's quite unexpected, really. And while things have been set in motion, while my love swells on language offered to the masses of people who would read, would dare to comprehend their own hearts, I rest here in the Green Mountains. I breathe. I make pancakes for my boys and their friends. I fill a kiddie pool on the back lawn.  Read a book written by a kindred spirit. Mmmmm. Yes and please. Oh.

Life was always this beautiful, I think, and this new decade I'm entering, it shows me that beauty unblinkingly. Despair edges our experience ever...always it is creeping along the periphery of what is light, what is perfectly bright, but it is perhaps the contrast that brings into focus what there is to be grateful for. Fear is useless, I have learned. Instead: a mindful acknowledgment that it is there--despair like a garment so easily adorned--and a deep appreciation that in this moment--today--now--it does not drape over our bodies. Does not cover our heads. Mahalo. Mahalo. Mahalo nui loa, I say to the sun, blazing above the arch of our mountain and illuminating the dew before lifting it from its sleep. There are no words, I think. But no. There are many.