Friday, May 23, 2025. 39* Overcast
The three tumbled inside at the same time to be dried, to get a biscuit, to return to sleep. Looking up through rain, I could not see the cosmic alignment in the dark hidden by clouds. In the small light of dawn, by the pond a white tail quickly disappeared into leaves. Perhaps it is too early to sing, too wet to fly.
Nature’s brew fills bowls in the lawn, raises the pond to places past its edges. Yesterday I walked on soft ground to pull up tiny oak trees. Some required more strength than my hands: trees growing from roots sunk deep, moved not removed by machinery last spring reclaiming the leech field. Have you ever seen a tiny oak tree with leaves; roots flowing like hair, longer than the thin trunk; their source of life, the acorn still intact?
Toward the edges black soil covers the debris of what was once here long before me and the three. A drawer from a dresser or desk, a broken flowerpot, a crate, a piece of blue coming-apart tarp, old car parts, pipes. Not a safe place to walk to reach what was a path deeper into the land, a path through trees that required crossing a small stream. People came, left things, beaver transformed the stream. If I were younger, I’d venture to the edge start removing the debris.
Some things I must let be.
Photo: LJ Austin
