Journal VII: for May's Decay

The Writer is Late

Now May, in all their vernal ecstasy, diminishes daily, too.
As April did before go that way, so June shall come and leave.
The summer is here already but the spring clutches us kindly.
Spring whispers in the eaves of our Love to come home again.
Spring cuddles our belonging and makes friends of our suffering.
Spring weeps for the private devastation of our quiet little lives.
I hope summer is so kind a mistress as to leave us, un-wanting.

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I wrote this poem in May and now reflect on it in late July. Summer has been a cruel mistress, hot and bothersome. Still, I cannot say I am left wanting.

I try, anyways.

It is a beautiful day in the afternoon I am writing this. I can hear the great trill of the insects outside and the constant chirruping of the birds, the scuff of the romping dogs and the solitude of the slumbering cats. I have been prolific this weekend, on the beautiful Sunday afternoon I am writing this. I have been active and interactive. I have been productive and deductive. It was a rough week, but I have managed to show something for it. This space has been a temple. I have a lot scheduled for the coming weeks and many plans for future pieces. A recent poem delighted one of my favourite artists and they made it known to everyone they know that they believe Our words are beautiful. And that is beautiful to me today, like the trill of the insects looking for love-bugs—like the listless, unheard clouds grazing on the air above me.

I don’t know what summer has left in store, but this July has been May’s decay. Like an undone promise that never was. Like a gilded lily. A straw dog before the dog days. August is hope—or the needlessness of hoping (we shall see). I miss my friends, and I miss temptation. I miss ignorance. I miss time in missing, though. And time is all that’s ever left us after before. I hold space for the presence of others, regardless of where presence had misled us. I hold space for what I have become—what I am today—after before. I hold space for all the things I will never be and release the temptation of my misgivings. Here I am. Witness me.

As I was writing here, Biden dropped from the US presidential race. Nature is ever moving, and the future is an impossible seed. So many will feel so much now as ever before. The course of days has never been more unclear, more obfuscated by the minutiae of being. The culture is a hothouse and nothing useful grows before it is plucked from us, hardly ripened, hardly sweet, hardly comfort. We gotta get a bit better, the lot of us, and be the animals we were born to be. We gotta get together better and be the ancestors our descendants deserve. We gotta get a bit more educated, educate ourselves, educate others. We gotta be more than loving. We gotta be Love, and a little bit of nothing, and a little bit of the dust we’ll all become.

No pressure. Let’s let August be an untended orchid, see what happens. Let’s let the glories of the season diminish as May did her spring eruption. All this chaos will pass, and then we’ll be in want for its passing. We’ll be in want for the decayed presence that has become longing, but we won’t let it dislocate our senses this time. We’re sowing a new garden. There’s no space for loving here: the meadow does not need the pettiness of want. The meadow is not a watering hole, it is the whole ecosystem, and it has no space for the selfish minutiae of longing. It’s just the Love.

Let’s just be with Love a while. No need to be in to anything. Just sit and rest, Sweet Reader. I’m here with you, and it’s time to let the decay be.