The brief green tulle dance

This shimmering shivering green transparency. Floating in your eyes and in your body. There is nothing like it.

It’s happening this minute. Summer is arriving on the 64th latitude. We call it pre-summer. When the winter-naked trees dress in light tulle and invite our hearts to dance and we don’t know how we can ever live without it.

I am thinking, how come nature does this? Year after year. How come it makes this effort? Gets through all this? What for? In three months the dress will bi worn out, falling apart, and the nine months of painful bold darkness will celebrate it’s victory. Ha, the dance is over, like it always will be!

I am lying on my couch with the balcony door open. The wind has fallen and the blackbird is singing in the sunny May evening. It’s been one more long and painful winter for me. Sometimes there is spring in my body. It happens. When the pain is less severe and I can look out in the world for a while. Take short walks. Say hello to my neighbors. Sing in my choir. Have a fika with a friend. Even sit at my desk working for an hour or two.

And I am thinking, yes, I am on my way! It’s time to start lifting the dumbbells and get my arms back! And I am extending my walks and I can sit through a full rehearsal and even sing in concert. I begin making plans. I take on a big assignment and I am toying the idea of seeing Seattle one more time. Maybe there is life for me after all! Maybe there will be dancing again!

And then winter is crashing right into my body. Cold flashes of unbearable pain immobilizing me, and I am thinking what’s the point? What’s the point of that short spring? How many times am I supposed to rise from this? Where will I get the energy to try for it one more time? What’s the point of a spring when there isn’t an everlasting summer?

Of this I am thinking, watching the birches, maples, aspen trees, balsam poplar, mountain ashes, bird-cherry trees and my fathers ash getting greener by the minute here at the end of the road. Of this I am thinking while listening to the blackbird, the wood pigeon, and do I hear the first cuckoo in the west where the sun will be setting at 9.51 tonight?

The nature makes its wonder every year. It performs its miracle. Although brief, painfully brief, it makes the dance in a transparent green tulle. Why shouldn’t I?