I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
from The Summer Day: Mary Oliver
I honestly thought for a second that someone had left some tasteful lights up in the tree near the play area in the park, because from a distance, I could see perfect globes strung up in the boughs, white with a barest hint of green. Lights, I thought, greened with algae, perhaps forgotten from Christmas or some other celebration.
As I drew nearer I could see that the whole tree was covered, every twig tip, and it was just the sun shining on the buds that made them looks so bright and celebratory.
We have just been up to the grey North for the weekend. It didn't rain but we drove through thick clouds of mist every morning. Last week, driving back up country from Somerset, I mourned the sea and the green hills as we entered the city, but this week, we drove down and the skies lightened the further south we got. We arrived home as the sun did that last flare it does, just before sinking. Everything lit up for a few minutes... it made me glad to be home.
And Spring is truly here now. Even last week, while it was wet, it was clear that every tree was about to burst into green. Walking down a dull alley, under my umbrella, I spotted these flower-like leaf buds creeping over a garden wall.
I forgot how much I liked walking in the rain. How quiet it is, how the sound of the rain encloses you. Peaceful.
The brook was swollen in the park, and rivulets ran down the footpath. Water collected in every dip and hollow, so that everywhere was full of shifting, silvery streams. These lichen encrusted twigs lay half submerged, the palest green which almost shimmered in the pearly light.
I had decided to stop taking pictures, to stop being the women who crouches down over puddles in the rain; who puts her fingers into the mud to rearrange twigs just because they are looking strangely beautiful... but look how exquisite they are!
9th April, 2018
One day, I won't be thrilled by Spring. But not today.
I thought it would be fitting to finish with a circle. I have photographed so many circles during the course of this blog - flowers, leaves, berries - and it has been a record of the cycle of the seasons. Such a beautiful journey into mindfulness. I will never walk through the world as mindlessly as I did before I started to deliberately notice things, the way my children did when they saw 'twinkly weeds' and 'sparkly flowers'. Slowing down to notice has been a gift I gave to myself as I walked the city streets and parks, the ugly places and cramped corners of Birmingham which expanded and unfurled before my eyes, revealing mystery and beauty.
I found these tiny Firethorn leaves in a hedge at the edge of the field where my children were sledging. The field only barely escapes being wasteland, a steep hill between two council estates that is usually bordered with wide swathes of bramble. With the thorns smothered under piles of snow, I could walk right to the edges where the gardens begin, and this Firethorn had spilled over into the wilderness, a small flare of colour I could see from far up on the hill. I walked down through the drifts and made a perfect circle of green and red on the snow, and in the distance I could hear my children laughing and shrieking as they slid down the hill over and over again. Our own little circle of perfection. The snow was crisp underfoot and the sun was streaming over the houses and tower-blocks behind us as I crouched over my little circlet of leaves, their colours so perfect and glowing between the snow and the sun... and I thought to myself... what a wonderful world!
