2006-09-28 - 10:44 AM

the trees are so beautiful this morning ... reds golds yellows rusts browns the branches bending over the road their arms enfolding me and waving bits of colored leaves in the brisk morning air. it wakes something old in me. that mother earth part of me that feels like nurturing the world.. gathering all to my breasts making soup and wearing my moccasins.

i looked at my face this morning the lines around my eyes showing more with bits of graying hair here and there. age spots and wrinkled hands. the fall reminds me i am in the autumn of my life. when i was young, i imagined this time with grand babies and an old partner who would walk among the leaves with me, content in our quiet, finishing my sentences and remembering old memories with me. our old wrinkled hands together warmly. my image will be nothing like i thought.. just as my life has been nothing i imaged. as time unfolds i realize how little i know. my dreams and hopes end up in ashes on the floor and yet i go on having dreams and hopes. a perpetual child i am inside. always rebuilding her sand castle.

i watch my neighbor as she goes through a terrible divorce, her bitterness and anger are her constant companions. i beg god to keep my heart pure. not to let those things take hold there and grow. i watched my sweet aunt become that old bitter crone. i use my love as a poultice to soothe those hard places that want to form in there. love keeps me soft and young . love keeps my heart resilient and hopeful. such is the love that grows unnurtured, a vine of neglected morning glories that still bloom on the porch of an abandoned farm house. a farmer would call them volunteer plants.. flowers and vegetables that come up without tending. without fuss... god has blessed me with a volunteer heart that renews and heals itself.

i could lay down and pass over now, the contentment feels that way sometimes. like i have done and finished what i came to do.. yet inside i still hear a voice telling me there is much work left to do. that this quiet space is but a valley in the mountain path ... that i need to build my inner strength for what is to come. i wonder what comes with the autumn...

last night fawn came and got in bed with me. both of us in our jammies nose to nose.. i smoothed her cheek and watched her eyes half close with contentment. i have smoothed her cheek in the same way ever since she was a baby sucking at my breast. even then she would melt with that same contentment. i kissed her eyelid and then her cheek. she said softly ..my mommy.. i said softly... my baby...

�

�