Drink Deep of the Day

March 30, 2021

While yet another of my close cousins has passed on, there has been no evidence of earth slowing it’s rotation or speed through universe. Nor has earth shown a visible lightening of it’s load. Argument, desire, life and laughter still resounds the hills. My cousin was a complex man but earth has no lesser burden with him gone. He will be missed by many and there will be no spring in earth’s step, though there is Spring in the air.

My time with cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents is slowing down to a memory of each -one-by-one. Many are no longer quick, though not all are dead, yet. That is still a future thing. A near future or nearer future, a certainty. A sooner than later. Our old world is winding down, disappearing more every spring. Winter has frozen off the elder branches, made room for the new shoots. Someone cut the bejesus out of the lilac, in preparation. The process continues however much slower for me. To the slowing of my time? no trees witness or celebrate such an event. They dance but they dance not for the slowing. They are dancing on the March-clean atmosphere of re-awakening as I write this.

I am just now thinking that a spring breeze must feel a bit like massage to a tree. Mmmmm. A stretching of the winter stilled limbs. A rejuvenation. A little exercise of tightened things, causing their canopies to blush with the hint of life. It is a light colour that suddenly appears one warm-ish day when the sun is just so. It is so funny that the vast number of emerging buds has the power to shut down a north wind. Fragility, en masse, takes down the captor.

I can’t see much serious change, year to year on this little laneway where I live. The major events to remark upon are all hum-de-dum ordinaryness. There is a very pregnant neighbour lady on one side of the laneway and a recently vacated womb on the other side, behind me, in the other row of houses. The neighbour who has junk piled everywhere is still smiling and cheerful, still picking his way around the stacks. The new couple speed rapidly in and out, trying to hit something but haven’t been successful yet. Not even the thousand squirrels have surrendered a life to the tire. The mayor still grumbles her way in and grumbles her way out. There is still the little boy who calls me Uncle whenever he sees me. I shout back, pleased. The struggling grass is… still… Skinny, Shirtless Guy is… still…

I have one less living cousin, one more dead one. We can pack up a few more things, get them out of the way. Clear a bit of space. When my time has slowed to a stop, or your time has, maybe, it’s possible to pass some stuff of value along to be used again. If we are lucky. If we are smart. If we learned a thing or two, there will be some useful stuff to pass on. I know there will be stories to tell for a while, before the tale-tellers lose their command of speech or their ready, listening ears. When spring hits us each year, I shall tell the tales, ribald or otherwise, with abandon. That is all I can do. Drink deep of the day, dark or otherwise, friends.