In the Intervals

We grow up. The earth remains a child.
Stars and flowers, in silence, watch us go…
Rainer Maria Rilke

I know a place where in glorious intervals life
is eternally new. You come to it through a young
wood where pine and oak grow tall. You’ll know
you are close when you bend under a weather
bleached cedar, and, as you straighten your back
you see the elephant skin of an ancient copper
beach tree.

From the woodland path you can see a river
of low growth whose surface is slightly over your
head. If you follow the flow down stream, birds
will delight you as your foot steps set them in
fearful flight. At the top of a knoll, just off the
path, I have, on a warm summer’s day, thrown
my body out to dry on flat ledge rocks. You can
see marsh grass from that ledge. In the early
spring the ice, like dirty gray meringue, sticks
against the muddy path. There, on shrub size
willows, the red winged black birds puff chests
and trill at arriving newness. Here on branches,
just within reach, thrushes build their nests.

If you look closely at the base of those willows you
will see twisted and torn stumps, just about the size
of the new shoots that are now balancing new life. On
a misty morning, after the rain has stopped, you can
hear black birds singing several octaves below the
sizzling hum of the high tension electric lines.

The electric lines must be protected from growing
things. So every five years an army of cutting
machines is deployed to violently sweep away the
black bird perches and thrush nests. In the spring of
the cutting year life’s water level is lowered.

In my living room I have a remnant of the last time
the great machines paraded in formations. I have
saved a twisted wood section of life that once grew in
that place where life is eternally new. It adorns a
window in my living room. I have decorated it with
red leaves of a earth creeping vine that grew over my
favorite ledge rock.

We live in intervals between cuttings. We grow old
and die, yet life always remains a child and birds and
young shoots know how to celebrate spring.

Blessings,
Stephen