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06 July ~2008
This morning me and Ben and Maggie took the trail down the hill to the meadow and the eleven cottonwoods and the frog pond. The milkweed are starting to bloom, and the bees are busy landing on them to get the nectar that awaits them in the corona lobes. They get their feet caught in slits with threads attached to two pollen clusters (pollinia). To break free they have to pull out the pollinia, and sometimes you see bees with several attached to their feet.Under the trees where the brook flows through and the sedge and rush grow I noticed that cottonwood seeds had covered the blades that were lying over. I stopped to photograph it.
I tossed a stick in the lake for Ben to swim out and get and then bring to the meadow for our regular game of throw and fetch. The tall summer grass makes it a challenge for Ben.
This is the time of the year that the Leopard Frogs jump into the pond in succession, as Ben and Maggie approach. It is big entertainment for the dogs, and I swear Ben seems to mimic them. When one flings itself into the air with their telltale squeak, as if hurling into oblivion, Ben leaps right after them and lands in the same spot. He never finds them - they have vanished.
I know why they disappear, after spending an hour waiting for them to appear again then trying to catch some. When they leap into the pond they continue swimming underwater for several yards, until they are hidden in the cattails and the bottom detritus. I finally had to tell Ben and Maggie that they beat me, I can't catch one for them to see.
Yeah, at 56 years old I wade through ponds trying to catch frogs and talk to my dogs about it. It's all part of the freedom I enjoy - having the luxury to do any damn thing I want. Some might call it eccentric and I don't give a flying frog's butt that they do.
This has been a good weekend - just enough solitude to feel like I have an authentic life, and then when I feel the heaviness of lonely starting to press down, I go out to a dance and swing those pretty ladies and hold them close until my heart is full.
Healing has all kinds of forms. I like the quiet kind - the roof of summer foliage as I walk on the trail with my two border collies - the blue-eyed grass that appears in late afternoons where just grass blades and rush were in the morning, the feeling that there is not one thing better than being down in this meadow with my two border collie friends.
And there is the kind from the touch of a woman's hand, the press of her body next to mine - the spark in her smile that makes me feel proud in having had a part in it, dancing to this song, close in my arms.
I was telling a friend last week that it has been good for me in not having had any sort of contact with my exwife for a couple of years - that perhaps I can get over this. Still, I told her, I have had many friends but no serious relationships since Janet left, almost eight years ago now. My friend said maybe it is understandable that it takes so long - I mean you two were together for such a long time.
I said you know I married her when she was a young woman, beautiful and fit as these young ladies at the swing dance we were at. Perhaps what has kept me alone is that I havent found anything that comes close to what I felt for her then, and continued until she said we had to part. Maybe going slow like I have is a way of honoring my one love.
Once in a while I see someone in the street that from behind looks like her. There is that affection in my heart that can't be explained, followed by a deep sense of loss.
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