Tea on the Rocks

I lay flat on a rock, sipping chai tea. Sweet nectar surrounds me. Pine fresh scent. Swallowtails dance. Hummingbirds drink in the red lilies. Finches cheep-cheep, hidden in the trees. Ospreys soar overhead making soft, high-pitch calls. Their wings arced in a V-shape as their glide above, circle, and return. They float upon the wind, disappear, then come back to us. Another bird answers from somewhere behind me in the trees. Osprey calls are a mixture of a cat's meow and the shriek of a hawk. A deer forages in their front lawn, eating leaves and buds. The first one they've seen here. Trains whistle in the dark, moving, chugging up and down the tracks just beyond the road, along the healing river. Inside the house, family laughs. Brothers connect. Puppy nails click against the wood floor.

Visit with cousins, jump into nostalgic memories from long ago. Love & and family sustain, and that makes me happy.

Out on Detroit Lake. Perfect water weather. Deep blue. Fresh air against our cheeks. Family love. I remember the splash of the water (especially when a certain driver accidentally dipped the nose of the boat into the lake!) The sun on my body. The eternal laughter of that day.

Moonlight and Me

Hoh River, Olympic National Park

Through slender red alder trees, a three-quarter moon rises high above the Hoh River, illuminating the rushing current. In a pool alogside the shore, a moon-face reflects back to me, a mirror into the deepest parts of me.

What shines back? What spills into the pools of moonlight, I'm not quite sure. But I feel myself more like the waters of the Hoh. Unending, never stopping. Going forward downstream, collecting driftwood, rounding stones. Rising and falling along an ancient glacial valley, reflecting stars, red-shine of Mars, the glow of the moon. Tonight. Tomorrow. And every night forward.

The moon tells me so. And in her reflection, this midnight on the Hoh River, I believe her. Whole heartedly. It is a gift to sit here on her riverbanks.