One Of Many

Thank you to arriving early so that I can arrive at all

This morning, as I sat on a stoop waiting to arrive at the appointed time, I watched a sparrow preen its tiny plump body in the branches of a leafless end-of-winter tree. Birdsong flickered in the air, tiny bells chiming. Someone sweeping the pavement down the block rhythmically grounded the brightest blue spring sky.

These sounds, this bird, this moment between moments, everything felt placed just so. I breathed it in, and inadvertently captured the perfume of an older woman walking past. Turning to look, I caught the back of her as she headed up toward the avenue, her bottled red hair, simple grey jacket, and frill less amble. Her scent, at odds, was bright and surprising. I felt the longing for what once was pass through me and fade with the disappearing fragrance.

The breeze jostled a confetti of dried leaf dust at the foot of the stoop and shifted the benign shadows of trees branches.

My heart settled in the in-between space of watching and waiting. I could feel spring offering a delicate invitation. A tenderness, turning a corner of sorts. The magnolia buds’ promised brightness buried in their fur coats.

I caught the thread of something then––something in the cycles of birth and rebirth. Cycles in nature that might also be contained in me. For a moment, I could feel a sleeping blossom inside me waiting for sun that is just warm enough. Remembering again, we too are nature, expressed, embodied, unwinding, quickening, pausing, blooming.

Everything in motion clear to me then, still all the while the mind always with a destination. For that moment though, just being one of many, the mind settled back to let the pixelated beauty of now, always cresting, be seen.

What a relief.

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