One Day At A Time
Step outside the garden door,
fill your eyes with morning light,
your whole body with dawn fresh breath.
Sink your bare feet into the green cushion
of dewy wet grass,
your toes tingling with surprise.
In the heart of everything before you,
be still.
You are in the presence of The Sacred.
While sitting in the gazebo in Gill’s garden,
I saw a little bird in the tree.
But on closer inspection, it was simply a leaf.
All is not what it appears to be,
but one way or another,
real or imagined,
Gill was here,
through me.
Flower beds,
climbing beans,
cabbages, crisp and clean,
the narrow ditch
where nettles sting.
Snail tracks glisten
like silver threads on
the pile of stones at the garden end.
On hands and knees I hold my breath,
gaze through the gap
in the hawthorn hedge,
to the meadow,
where white horses tread.
And everywhere I look,
is new.
(You never forget that view.)
When I was very young, nature engaged in my make-believe games in complete and total co-operation. In my Grandmother’s garden, every day brought a new discovery, stored in my memory box of sights, sounds, tastes, touch and smell, emotions almost beyond a language of descriptive adjectives. Someone said that birds, and animals perceive the world in a different way to humans, this is possibly true, up to a point. But what if, as adults, the ability to listen with our senses diminished along with our outgrown childish toys. The world is more than it seems, it speaks the language of the heart that we are all connected to. I trust my heart to engage with nature in total and complete gratitude.
I sit in the Garden of Remembrance, on a damp wooden bench. It is 10.30am. The church bell rings three times. I am here to talk to you, if you would come, one more time, just for today, to this cold, shaded side of the church where tired ground, patch-worked grass, wind weathered yew trees, and rain sodden flowers in plastic buckets present no joy, no comfort.
Lets be done with this lifeless place, stay away Mum, there is no need to come here again. I know you hear me, I know you agree. You are in my heart. Your memory more alive than this bleakest of places could ever be.
