Recycling

The pond across the road from my cottage. It is one of nature's ever-changing paintings.

Theelementary posted a delightful piece of writing about looking at familiar things from a different perspective. It reminded me of a post I wrote two springs ago. (You'll notice a reference to greening grass and budded branches. We're a far cry from that at the moment as more snow is falling.) Anyhow, in the interest of recycling, here it is again.

Ancient wisdom suggests we look at each day not as if it was our last, but with new eyes, as if every day was our first. Finding that thought compelling, I step out into the sunrise and am struck by the beauty and the mystery of everything around me. What would it mean to see grass for the first time, green and growing, each blade individual and new, rising from the dried and tangled mat of last year’s growth, yet each shoot blending and waving with its counterparts until they spread out before the eye like a verdant sea? Imagine the wonder at touching a bare foot to the dew-drenched stuff, seeing an imprint dark and mysterious appear, then watching it fade as though you did not exist as the sun rises and drinks the condensation.

What of the lilac tree by the door, its trunk gnarled and twisted, the bark rough and scaly, the branches dusted with the bright green of spring-coiled leaves waiting to open? If you had no word for tree, no language to describe the budded arms that would soon be brimming with lushly scented flowers, wouldn’t the wonder of it all sweep you away?

I leave my yard to walk along the edge of the pond in the growing light and watch the sun coat the ripples with silver. Last year’s dried oak leaves dance toward me in a sudden gust of wind even as this year’s prepare to unfurl. I look up and my eye is caught by the movement of small birds high over the pond, swallows perhaps. They are too far up for me to tell, but their joy is clear as they swoop and rise and sail out over the water and back, diving and skimming and soaring again and again. The sun touches the undersides of their wings so that they seem to float on feathers of pure light.

The wind swoops through the tops of the pines, rushing from one to the next, whispering green secrets. The boughs rise and fall as though breathing and I am caught up in the sound and the rhythmic dance of needles against sky. Then the wind is at my feet, whirling the loose sand into miniature cyclones before blowing off across the open fields, losing itself in the woods at meadow’s edge. Later in the afternoon and into the evening as the light wanes and the day’s colors melt into darkness, I will walk once more beside the pond, watching the water, different water now, new water, make its way to the falls. I will understand again that nothing lasts, though nothing appears to change, and tomorrow and tomorrow I will see again with new eyes the same ordinary things.