Well Bottom Blues

After years of chemically-modulated equilibrium it’s strange to wander once again the chase light calliope streets and the beckoning, threatening alleys my mind maps onto the world. Yesterday was work and errands and writing and a fine poetry reading. Today is a tree under which I will sit and contemplate the war of the oaks between the Spanish moss and the resurrection fern.

This, too, is a sort of equilibrium, the arc of the pendulum that clocks the hours of a life both in the world and not entirely of it. When I lived away I carried back a bag of Spanish moss to hang from a plastic ficus to remind me of home. The moss is transient (look at it around my feet) and a permanent fixture through my life, hanging from the drooping branches inviting you to climb. The moss grows and falls while the trees remain, a reminder that I am just a spectator in the moment.

My inspiration is the resurrection fern, by turns gray and green depending on the weather, a reminder that time is not just a numbered arrow but the measured arc of tick and tock, the back and forth in search of the path, looking for just the right words to send a small ripple out into the universe even if it’s only the flick of fish and insect in the shade of a grandfather oak.