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Chipping Sparrow egg

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Sunday morning.

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It’s blackberry season!

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"Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside."

--Anne Sexton

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“Your eyes are kind.” she remarked, as she took the rumpled $5 bill from my hand.

“Thank you.” I replied, accepting my change.

I drove off, touched by the grace offered in the mundane moment at a mountainside convenience store.

The muscadine juice tasted especially sweet.

(iPhone 6; gpoy on the mountain)

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Last night I spent nearly six hours in the emergency department.

I’m ok.

But I wasn’t ok to drive myself there, so I called my daughter and asked her to take me the 45 miles.

(Silly that I even entertained the thought of driving myself. When the patient advisory nurse thinks you should have called an ambulance instead of them … well … my hyper-independence is a conversation for a different day.)

So with the nurse’s words of warning (“if [x, y, or z] happens on your way there you need to have her call an ambulance IMMEDIATELY”) we set off.

Again, I’m ok.

And, at the same time, I’m not ok. Because at one point, I had to ask my daughter to please put my hair in a ponytail. I couldn’t manage it on my own hooked up to all the leads and IVs and monitors.

Without hesitation she gathered my long thick hair into a ponytail. So gently, so tenderly, so confidently did she move that in her simple actions I glimpsed a possible version of our future; one where she cares for me rather than the other way around.

I don’t know what that might look like, but in her simple act of lifting my heavy hair and bringing me comfort, I didn’t feel like a burden.

I only felt pure love.

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I can see the future.

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That’s 1861-1865. Grand Army of the Republic (US Civil War)

Also, two Oddfellows markers.

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Canadian wildfires have reached the southern Midwest. Sunrise over the outbuildings.

Eerie evening sun.

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[AS]LEEP IN JESUS

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Spring garden is flourishing!

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A riot of

Saucer-sized

Clematis.

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Small but mighty

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Tornado Warning at Hurricane Separate Baptist Church.

Established 1858.

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Sweet Betty loves fresh flowers from the gardens.

🐾🩵🐾

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In The Arc Of Your Mallet

Don’t go anywhere without me. Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me, or on the ground, in this world or that world, without my being in its happening. Vision, see nothing I don’t see. Language, say nothing. The way the night knows itself with the moon, be that with me. Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am.

I want to feel myself in you when you taste food, in the arc of your mallet when you work, when you visit friends, when you go up on the roof by yourself at night.

There’s nothing worse than to walk out along the street without you. I don’t know where I’m going. You’re the road, and the knower of roads, more than maps, more than love. (Rumi)

(graffiti on rural bridge; photo mine; iphone 4s)

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Cheaper than a “sign.”