gratitude | Pigeon Heart Ponderings

Flower Up, Heavy Heart

Posted in death, dying, flowers, gratitude, love, mourning, nature, poetry on September 11, 2024| 5 Comments »

If you need me, I will be hiding behind pale yellow flowers. Those are the current most robust ones in my presence. To trace them by the hours is to watch their faces follow the sun; beacons to light, beckoning bees originally, & now me. But I won’t be in the garden- this time, & not for a while. I’ve been complicit in the chain of events that leads to filling the mouths of those who cut these down, batch them up, & dispense to stores, where those of us with barbells weighing our hearts down; entire albums of Ma Rainey’s basement tapes of blues-worth-of-weight weighing our hearts down; a wayward sumo wrestler on a lonely binge of midnight ice-creams worth of weight in the heart part & all the rest of the heavy heavy winds- occasionally find some reprieve. It’s been a sad, slow spring-bleeding-into-summer, with autumn starting to hang its nose over the fence. Time continues to baffle & tick forward; me- trailing, trying to get my legs under me with a forward leading, 200 pound head. Trying not to face plant. Trying not to fall, as to fall is to continue to lay, & it’s proven I’m not best at rest.
There were more pieces to me when I first started. The things I did not know earlier. The lightness that I could have entertained. I have shed skin, entire body parts, & an entire other body connected to my soul, again. 1 father later, this time. What a miss. 100+ flowers since, almost forgotten. Surrounding myself thereafter in anything that could trade its own charm for temporary happiness. I am merciless with flora; a biblical nuisance; like their life is here for my pleasure & I take, trim, assemble…
Dispersed throughout my house & across my field of vision- colorful variants that once stood in a field, serving pollinators & grateful moments of paused gaze. I take & take to plug a hole, because I am full of an emptiness of no known bottom that demands beauty to come in from outside myself, as my strength has not been sufficiently gathered to float my own. Sometimes it’s the things that didn’t volunteer to be your cheerleader that wind up holding the pompoms. If a broken heart can be cushioned with pillows of petals then I will water each morning, in mourning when I am able. If satiation exists through awaking the olfactory cortex for a spell, then I’ll take the quiet riot of color captive. Supportive substitutes, buoying well-being. I thank thee.

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Pink Crown

Posted in corona, covid, flowers, gratitude, nature, prose on April 27, 2020| 1 Comment »

Life is pretty pink right now. I kick it up with my toes; trail it home- stow aways’ in the crannies of my trainers. Everything in eye shot is blooming and sloughing. The earth: a post Thanksgiving meal eater, undoing its belt and letting it all hang out. All bets off. Ready for a shake. Like being through an earthquake without the tremors. Like a silent letter: the K in knife. Cut off. We’re all left, standing for safety in the door jamb, watching blossoms act so innocent, in part providing reassurance that the beat goes on, and in other part- seeming duplicitous, as if to say, simply- “come”.

But we can’t come now. Most of us can- at liberty- walk the blocks, though ill advised to venture from home far, as fear is the new dominant, dictating monger. We must avoid one another, and swallow fear when foreign objects enter our homes. Clean our hands with vigor and discipline, and learn to trust the cleanliness of others in our proximity.
You know you’re in deep when your nightmares consist of a faceless somebody petting your dog.
Here we are on our couches, absorbing movie after movie; ringing out our creative juices to get even a few amenable drops; cooking test run recipes from our mother’s lineage; spending quality-time, or alone-time, or terrible-too-small-world -time with loved ones, or old friends, or no one, or proximal, newly minted enemies. No matter how you slice it, everything is amplified. The light shines bright on every second, stretching them out like Coney Island taffy in July.
Streets, yards and sidewalks are covered in messy, carefree beauty that only an equinox can get away with. The natural-order and the parasitic-human dance to the same music at different beats, a Junior High-hands-free dance with a nun at the helm, monitoring touch with a stinging ruler. We are in perfectly juxtaposed tandem and its all awkward moves. Our mortal terror bowing to the elegance of the bold bearded Iris, the puffy Cherry blossoms, blushing Dogwoods, the auspicious Wisteria.
I walk past them, air kissing their pigment through my eyes, thankful for the distraction provided, and their involuntary reminder that washes in and out like the ocean waves at the shore, to focus on the passing colors and settle me into the weird, waking dream.