Questions and answers

Sometimes I get trapped into thinking there is one right answer. 

Like the child listening to the children's homily preached by her pastor, being asked the question: What's brown and furry and has a long tail, and buries nuts for the winter? 

I know the answer is Jesus, says the child, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me.

Do I have all I want? Do I have all I need?

Sometimes the answer comes the next day.

It's a squirrel.

Sometimes

We ask the right question

And then

Don’t wait

To hear

The answer.

Perhaps it is even

The right answer,

But we have moved on

To other interesting questions

Or figured

There wasn't an answer

Worth considering

To the first.

Sometimes someone else

Asks the question

And if we don’t have an answer

We make it up,

Get stuck in an endless loop

Of words

We wait for the next question

Perhaps we will have an answer,

A real answer,

To that one.

Yesterday I was asked if I had

All I wanted,

All I needed.

A good question.

I got stuck on the difference

Between wants and needs,

Got lost in the fog,

Spun the rest of the day.

This morning I woke up to rain,

Spring, greening, rain

Realized what I have

Is enough.

Blooming greening world

Rather amazing. It feels as though this happened overnight.

The blooming greening world

Decided yesterday

To believe the temperature

The humidity

The rain wandering through

The blooming greening world

Appeared today

In almost full leaf

It was waiting

For exactly the right time.

This seems to be it.

Life themes

I have a long list of things to wait for.  I also have a long list of things to celebrate now.  We fly out this weekend to look at one of the possible school choices.  The week is a quieter week for me, work-wise.  I plan to enjoy it.  The weather seems to have settled.  This helps my brain function better.  I am grateful.

When I look at

Life themes

Waiting is one the major ones.

Even as I say

Now

Now is just as important

Now is more important even

Still

I am convinced

Only a little.

Even now I wait,

Expectant to drive

Next Monday.

Even now I wait

For all the colleges in the world

To clamor

For my daughter’s presence.

Even now I wait

For a more full spring

For a fuller greening

Than this one hinted

Before my eyes

Even now.

Finally the greening

Spring brings new life to places I suspected were lifeless.  A good thing.

Finally the greening

Has arrived,

Sun in tow.

The cat sleeps upside down,

Ears twitch with birdsong,

Tail offers

The occasional thump.

The house is again open

To the world.

We bring the outside in

And inside out.

Spring is leaven.

Spring is yeast.

It brings forth life

In unexpected places.

It makes new trails,

New tracks in places

Which were heretofore

Uninhabited.

Realized dreams

It rained yesterday, all day... the soft soaking kind of rain, the kind we needed after day after day of hot and sun.  Sometimes a simple change of weather, even gray and rain, makes the next day look different, allows for new possibilities.

Yesterday

The steady soaking rain,

The gray skies

Made the green grass

Somehow greener.

Today the sky bloomed blue

Still humid

But there are possibilities

Like clouds

They float and drift

Where the wind blows.

The clients I see

Every Monday

Find new hope

In the fresh washed grass,

Even the one who arrives

Skeptical

Every week.

Today she laughed

When I told her she deserved

Her dreams

Realized.

Weeds

The weeds are ecstatic

For the recent rain.

They sing in the front yard.

They green

The brown spaces.

They are the first

To return,

Hardy souls 

They have lived underground

As seeds

In the drought.

They green

The brown spaces.

Nothing like rain

Independence Day is almost upon us, and the corn is mostly not *knee-high by the Fourth of July.*  We drove out west to pick up our daughter from camp in Oregon yesterday (Illinois)(not the western state!), so we got to eyeball the progress of the corn.   It is still too dry for fireworks in a lot of places.  Still... it is amazing what a little rain can do for the spirit when no rain has been forthcoming.  The lawn is already a little greener.  

There is nothing like rain,

When rain has almost

Been forgotten;

Nothing like rain,

When it is almost

Childhood memory,

Puddles and splashes,

Face turned to the sky

Mouth open

To catch the drops;

Eyes peeled for greener grass;

Feet and ankles stretched

To walk there,

Feel the fresh between

The toes.

There is

Nothing like rain.

Reminder of green

I am reminded again that life is always out the other side.  Sometimes it*s the slight green from a few drops of rain.  Sometimes it*s a friend who closes the blinds so I can see, weep my own few tears, find the hint of green on the other side.

Yesterday brought

Those few drops of rain,

Enough to bring the bare reminder

Of green

To the lawn.

The weather is out of whack

For late June.

The hints of life

Require a search

Through Colorado wildfires,

Early hurricanes

In the Gulf.

Yesterday I sat with a friend.

He closed the blinds

So I could see

Through my few tears,

Through

To the ever-present reminder

Of green.

Considering the ordering of things

Sometimes it is important to consider all that is already in front of us, instead of adding things to the pile.  It is important to have good staging for this exercise.

This morning

I will unearth the vases

From the sideboard.

I will bring greening branches

Indoors

As reminder

That everything still goes on.

Everything grows.

Green branches will provide

The backdrop

The staging

For things to come.

This morning it*s time

To sit with the data

In front of me,

Not worry about

New stuff,

Simply consider

The old,

The way it all fits together.

For now it is enough.

After all is considered,

There is nothing new

Anyway.

All of it

Has been here

Forever.

This morning

I will clean and sort things

Into new piles.

I will make new order.

Green branches will provide

The backdrop.

The columbine by the window

Has one purple beginning.

I saw the hummingbird there

Last year.