The air hangs heavy in anticipation of rain, yet breathability has increased for me as the pollen load so prevalent the past few months has eased almost into emptiness. Something else will take the place of the Ashe Juniper mating season because Spring has erupted here in the hill country, but other pollens do not seem to trouble me. Green bursts from every angle of viewpoint, causing my eyes to blink in semi-disbelief. Yes, it happens every year, but has it ever been this perfect, this profoundly unsettling?
I am able to be out and about again, walking once more my old familiar routes to the edges to town, strolling across the wide river bridge where only one channel of the river runs because the city has opened the flood gate to lower the level of the lake so that sand and silt can be excavated and taken away. A pair of seagulls wing over, wondering too, I suppose, what happened to the expanse of water they are used to seeing and savoring. Watching my footing on the uneven ground, I take a side trip away from the main road to wander through the park, desolate now, but within a month it will have regained its strength with tall grasses and fully leafed trees.
At home, I go about the business of finishing up a weeding project I started. Content with the chore of pulling up the neighbor’s encroaching Bermuda, digging down to unearth deep roots and then spraying the boundary with strong vinegar to prevent regrowth, I like the practice of keeping a tidy yard, one that looks, to my maternal eye, meticulously well-loved and cared for. Birds offer a chortling symphony of sound. Black beetles race away from my clawed trowel. And there, caught in the weave of the chain link fence, a snake skin glimmers, as fragile and transparent as the veil between this world and the next.
I try to imagine the snake’s natural process of shedding an outer layer that it has outgrown and no longer needs. And ponder the new skin emerging, becoming used to the sensation of sunshine, the uneven passage over stone slabs and bumpy cedar mulch. What’s left behind is beautiful, transient, and will soon crumble to shreds. What is forthcoming, for the snake and for me, is unknown, urging acceptance and openness.
~LJ