Remembering . . .

Spring in Texas pushes between the spaces of taco trucks. Patches of strong grasses grow through the asphalt looking for what used to be forest, and heavy rains in the early morning feed everything that rises from the winter dry ground.

March is the shedding and revealing month in the Austin hills. Live Oak leaves yellow out, shed, bud, and re-leaf within weeks. A majestic Spanish Oak, who I call Grandmother, keeps watch from a corner in my backyard. She shed her leaves in November. Along with the Live Oak ,she is leafing now. New green feels like the color of promise and hope, the color of rebirth, revealing the cycles of life.

Mother/Father God live in these trees, live in all things, and nothing is without the Divine spark that is Creator and Creation. To this prayer do I give myself.

When the rains stop, the clouds break apart, revealing a silver light winding itself around homes, forest, and Ford-F150’s. Rains stoping and light returning becomes a metaphor for healing. Beauty can be found in likely and unlikely places. Poetry is born in the weeds that grows between the sidewalk slabs.

Today came with a list of “to-do’s,” a trip to Home Depot and the grocery store, a class, the day-to-day stuff of life. One more cup of tea and the promise to make things: make writing, make a meal, make mercy, make kindness and hold fast to the ideal of being in service in some way, no matter how small, to those around me. I practice like this, with these prayers and intentions, because our world feels broken and my heart is aching. I practice like this so I won’t forget, light follows the darkness.