After Summer

After spending some time this morning reading some Walt Whitman, I noticed that I was feeling different. My heart was filled with beauty again! Don't you love those days when everything looks so clear and all the colors are bursting with vibrancy! Your mind doesn't feel vague but alive and aware! It has seemed like a lifetime since I've basked in this light! I love to write and I've been entrenched in lamentations for so long that as I wrote today, I could feel life running through me again!

"After Summer" by Dee Armes-Hartmann

Outside the seagulls are cawing as they fly over my house. That's one of my favorite sounds, and when I hear it my mind takes me...... to a place where it's foggy and cool. I'm all wrapped up in a cable knit sweater, a soft hand-made scarf, leggings and fleece lined boots! I can smell the ocean's salt traveling on the fog and swirling all around me, making my hair curl up and my cheeks cool and rosy. I hear the loose gravel with each step as it grinds into the wet walkway and the rich moist dirt along the pathway gives off its organic scent! Everything feels so alive, even the rocks seem to have their own voice as the dew brings out all their hidden colors.

I look up and the hills are covered with a blanket of lush, intense green foliage and the grey sky is the color of my favorite cashmere wrap. All the things I love to sense are around me and with me. The shore with its collection of pebbles and old drift wood brings me a feeling of a safe and familiar path that I've come to travel with love. The waves reach into the land, then drift back to sea as if they know they can't be together, I try to time my steps to not interfere with their forbidden longings. Raw sand packs under my feet with each step and as I glance back I can see my past, then looking ahead, my future. I have no agenda, no plans, just one foot in front of the other till I feel like stopping or something stops me, like a grand view or a benign moment.

These days, when the sun is hidden by the clouds and all of life seems to be singing in alto, "Come out from your hiding places, where the shade cooled you and your eyes relaxed. Come out and feel refreshed and rested from the long days of summer!" I find now is the time to go slow, be thoughtful, cuddle, hibernate and drink warm things. Smell apples and cinnamon, hold people, stay in bed longer dreaming... Trust your toil to the seasons, while the sky waters your garden for you, for all is quiet and well with the heartbeat of God's earth. God himself whispers to you that it's time to rest, like the bud in the branch and the gladiola in her bulb, respect the season. See the rivers full, the apple trees robust and the birds flying low with their belly's full of corn. All is well and without need, so go ahead, desire deeply the goodness of God, for the branches are bending low with His bounty!