Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here

Ten days ago I would have invited you to take flight over this square, these four acres of a yellow so rich it would please you this night in your mind’s eye as you fell into sleep. The neighbor has not mowed all summer, and the goldenrod has come after the grasses and after the milkweed, and it has grown six and seven feet high. Thousands of stalks and each one in full sun carry four or five honeybees on its blossoms — Apis Mellifera, introduced by the Europeans, in desperate straits recently with colonies collapsing all over the country, but this summer, this day, they materialize on this small patch in the thousands, in the tens of thousands.

Descend and rest in the center of the square, the goldenrod drifting in the breeze above your head. Unmoving, let your eyes take in the teeming gilt of shiny-green sweat bees, thread-waisted wasps, an orb weaver spider, dragonflies flexing in the air above you, and one Red Admiral butterfly who looks as if he belongs in a painting with Spanish Kings. Move closer. All of them pass around your body and do no harm. Kneel down and look at the Daring Jumping Spider and the silken cups of Bowl and Doily Spiders and crisscrossing rabbit paths. At night fox hunt these paths, and screech owls perch in the tulip poplars to the west and send forth their trilling call.

For now though, you can be still. The Sun is climbing to mid-afternoon. The road is empty of traffic. If you sit, no one can see you. If you lie down, the blue sky will curve in a circle around the range of your vision until trimmed by the slow sweep of flowers. Bound up in nothing else but life, you can be happy.