ephemera

not meant to last, or...

ephemera : not meant to last

I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that…

- Mary Oliver, from “Of Love”^❇

finally, graciously, my dearest bloodroot has burst her gorgeous light-gathering petals through the ethers. bundled here and there and there again all over this place. i am drenched in treasure. 

in so many ways, this is my moment. but i’ve been resisting the fleeting. it’s hard to admit that my grasp of this joy is temporary. i know i bear new perspective. grief, loss, longing — they have changed the way my muscles twine and tense, the way i situate myself in the air, the way i reach for the world around me. i find myself drawn to hold on, to wrap my hands around this moment and let it travel through my palms into my breath, into my bloodstream, into my belly. to anchor it through my heels, to find my bones adjusting, posture shifting,  and know that i can stay here awhile. 

but i am not one to hold this way. i am entangled with the seasons. all of us are, our natures wrapped up in some story of time. the reasons for the change i’m in, whatever it is behind my attempts to hold tight to reality — these answers are elusive as the secret longings of my heart, yet to be revealed. i am, myself, ephemera.

every single spring before now, when i have encountered the first bloodroot of the season, i have fallen to my knees then and there. promptly. wholly. brought to the earth. this time, it took minutes. this time, my body stood still, ecstatic but rigid, stoic. i heard my voice shouting in surprise, yelling. i was elated. and i didn’t know how to crumble. 

tis the season for holding it all together. could it be so?  

eventually my knees pressed into earth, a choice more than a fall, tenderly reaching my belly to the ground, my face close to that first blossom and the one beside it. 

the very next day, there were more. two at first, then eight. now, less than a week later, there are already too many to count. i mean i could. i would, even. but their medicine is not in their numbers. it’s in the blissful sense of their pulse-tending song.

...And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some — now carry my revelation with you —
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning…

- Mary Oliver, more from “Of Love”^❇

but i will save the bloodroot stories for later. maybe even for the autumn, when it will be time to consider what exactly it means to hold the root weeping juice like blood into the earth, into my hands, into the vessel i’ve brought to the woods for this purpose. what will it mean to tend the transformation of this gorgeous life into another form, medicine of one sort or another? 

for now, i want to relish the moment, understanding that despite my grasp, bloodroot — all my friends, really; myself, too; we are all — ephemeral.

i want to honor the fleeting, knowing that living with the forest means spring and summer and fall and winter and spring again. these bonds are lasting. 

i have been speaking of my friends, the plants. low to the ground, leaves few and fine and tender, flowers lending themselves to the light, gathering bees and bugs and me. but i can’t help but think of the humans too, of love and lasting in the human layers.

grief and loss and change have opened me into a world rich with strong, thoughtful, compassionate relationships. i am newly connected with people who share a facet of this world with me, maybe plants or labor or tending relationship or poetry. my 35-year-old mind is softening into trust with them. i’m 13 again, counting on people. telling them my secrets, my hopes, my fears. 

strangely enough, in so doing, i realize it is impossible not to honor the fleeting. 

the language of belief — it changes with the seasons. i understand myself and the world more and differently and less every day, sometimes moment by moment. 

what am i bound to ignore, to dismiss, to deny, when i tether myself to the staying? 

i’m thinking of taxes, of bills to pay and meetings to remember, of projects to deliver, of voicemails unheard. are these things really staying? or is the staying power in the seeds to be sown, the ones that will grow up into poppies, my loves, and whose flowers and leaves i will gather in the long days of summer and pour into jars where they’ll steep making medicine for a while. these things are all fleeting, one iteration after the other teaching me of time and tether. the medicine here is moving, it’s evolving. ephemera. i hold and loosen this particular and unique moment in the lifespan of the thing. in the lifespan of me. 

last night i took a walk under the waxing moon. i was sitting, stretching, by a little fire in the woodstove to keep my joints warm, the whole picture strewn with light. and i realized the glow across my body wasn’t coming from my lamp but from the sky. straight up, through the skylight, there she was, bright as ever. a sliver bright like the full moon, unfettered by clouds.

i stepped out into the night. below her in the sky, stars peeked out over the mountain. i walked along paths lined with flowers i couldn’t see. i imagined how, in just a week or so, the light of the moon will be bright enough to shine on those bloodroot petals. i’ll look down and see them, curled into themselves in the dark but white, bright as anything, still. 

then in not even a few weeks more, the petals will fall to the earth leaving elegant seeds in their place. their leaves will keep growing, as big as my hand and bigger. until the air dries and the sun shifts and the leaves yellow and wither and rest. for a while. until the very first days of spring.

there it is: trust. mine to hold, to give, to keep. the hold and the loosening. the grasp and the release. my heart’s throughline while i wander with ephemera.

…So I imagine
such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine
this is how it began.

- Mary Oliver, still from “Of Love”^❇

how it began, how it is beginning, how it will begin again.

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^❇“Of Love” is a poem by Mary Oliver. The complete poem is in her book New and Selected Poems. 

^❇❇these musings have also taken shape as an in-person gathering this spring in candler, nc. rootdeepliving.com for details.