Photo by Stella de Smit on Unsplash
She walked along the beds,
Hands trailing over stakes
Heavy with vines
And sugar snaps.
Orange peeked
From underneath green hats
Far too wild for small heads.
Blushing tomatoes danced
Cheek to cheek
With peppers.
She smiled.
The garden will make
Good salad
Tonight.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge
She rose with the sun, her brow still damp with the essence of dream. Soon enough her feet were, too, from dew and from the small drops of silence that mornings bring.
There was little to say, and much space to accompany.
It was a good day.
It had to be.
There will be time much later on, for all the things she might still need, and all the words she may still say, and all the sorrows she no longer wished to borrow.
In the meanwhile, she walked on, crushing dandelions, breathing lavender.
The fields stretched ahead as the disc of light leaned hot against the sky. The air shimmered, dancing in the sun.
Or wavering.
It would not matter, in the long run.
She walked on.
Eventually she’d have to turn around, retrace her steps, return into the pace of tending, bending, sending, lending, fending.
And it would still be a good day.
For the dawn poured the generous morn into her, washing her, filling her, scenting her soul. Step by breath by step by breath, immersed into the longest walk her present moment could recall.
Photo: Sue Vincent
She walks along the dunes. There had been very little time away from others. So very few opportunities to be alone. She needs this more than air.
Morris agreed to keep an eye on the children. They were not enthused.
“He’s boring, Mama!” Ethan complained.
“Yeah, and his breath smells!” Lilly pouted.
“You don’t have to kiss him,” she replied. “And if you are bored, I can leave you some chores.”
They skulked away, displeased, but there was nothing for it, grumpy neighbor-as-babysitter or not. She knew she was becoming increasingly impatient. She did not want to cross the line into unkind.
It wasn’t their fault that Paul left. It wasn’t their doing that their dad did not see fit to shoulder any responsibility. She knew they missed him. He didn’t even think of calling on their birthdays. She knew Ethan cried for his dad in his sleep.
She almost took them with her to the dunes. Almost made it a family outing. Lilly loved running in the sand. Ethan’s eyes always lit up at the space. Like her, he loved the breeze and silence.
But she could not. Not this time.
This time she needed to replenish. For herself. For them. They needed a sane mother. She was running low on how.
She walks and breathes and ruminates and lets the worries and the sorrows stream out and flow down her cheeks and neck and chest till they evaporate.
There was a time she had hoped to have a house on the dunes. There was a time she had a dream of living in the solitary calm of gulls and tides and estuaries.
It wasn’t that she regretted having the children (marriage was a whole other story, given what non-partner Paul turned to be). She did not. Not once. She couldn’t imagine her life without them. Just for this morning, though … she needed to let be a part of herself that did not have them in its center.
She walks as if in daydream. The light shimmers and the estuary glints silver in the shrinking distance. It gives her peace. A reminder of how every stagnant-looking pool may in fact be only a pause in flow.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Take a pause
In the middle of a busy
Day,
To let calm
Wash down the toil, and sweetly stress
Allay.
For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Sweet
Photo: R. RZ
Take a moment
To rest
Ere you once more
Take flight.
Let the weariest
Parts
Lean their weight
With foresight,
For the breath
That will come
Delicate
In the light.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Rest
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
A moment
For the memory of
A different kind of home,
Where sun sparkles
On the water
And you feel your soul
Fold along the crease
Of rolling foam,
And where your spirit
Sings the song of places
It has long known
How to roam.
Photo: Inbar Asif
Rippled water paint
Soft liquid cloth
Along the coast,
While boats at anchor
Bob at buoys
With tides’ ebb and float.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Glow
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Ringed by the City’s
Towering scape
The reservoir
Invites a pause,
A breath of calm
Escape.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: City
Photo: D. Freedman
In between the wish for more
And need for less
She paused to let the breeze pass
Through
And transform her
From the rushing steps that never seem to
Gain foothold
On life,
To the tranquility of what is
Yet
to be left
Behind.
For the dVerse poetry quadrille challenge: tranquility
Photo: Philip Coons
Take the trail
Up the path
To where spring
Flows through minds,
And where fairies
Inspect
Those whose feet
Trail behind.
Listen on
To the leaves
Speaking tales
To the trees,
And to elves’
Rustling limbs
As they flit
In the breeze.
Dedicated with love to Dee, whose trail now flows wholly through realms beyond this physical one.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Trail
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