Hurricane

It didn't behave

like anything you had

ever imagined. The wind

tore at the trees, the rain

fell for days slant and hard.

The back of the hand

to everything. I watched 

the trees bow and their leaves fall

and crawl back into the earth.

As though, that was that.

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

was of a different sort, and

lasted longer. Then 

I felt my own leaves giving up and 

falling. The back of the hand to 

everything. But listen now to what happened

to the actual trees;

toward the end of that summer they

pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.

It was the wrong season, yes,

but they couldn't stop. They 

looked like telephone poles and didn't

care. And after the leaves came

blossoms. For some things

there are no wrong seasons.

which is what I dream of for me.

Today there is a nor'easter bearing down on where I live in New York. The wind will blow and the few leaves that still cling to our trees and bushes I imagine will be slapped down by the back hand of a winter storm.  To stay safe, the region's residents will take shelter for the next 24 hours, staying out of harm's way. 

 I remember once when I was 15 by father backhanded me, bloodying my nose, and I wonder how this and other assaults, perceived and otherwise, cause me to hunker down still, withdrawing so as to keep safe.   Each of us has cause to blame human kind for being wrong and inflicting so much pain upon one another and this world.  We have reason to despair. We also have choice to invite in love and life's crazy and erratic possibilities. Alas we cannot stay out of harm's way, but we put ourselves in beauty's way.

As leaves uncurl in thanks to the sun's gift of light, we too can shift.  There are no wrong seasons for life, love, joy, and peace.  Just when you thought the world before you was painted with one heart killing color, a splash comes or a drop, the canvass of your conceptions now ruined. 

Why do our minds seek unilateral thinking?  I am sure it is for some evolved survival reasons this judging we do when we call one thing good and another bad. Our subconscious minds evolved so we can react quickly to threats without. This survival orientation though paints over the interdependent reality where beauty brushes up against the cruelest act.  We imagine ourselves too busy avoiding tigers, angry fathers, and murderous tribes to see the whole - no separation between this one snow storm and leaves that die, and new ones to surprise and surpass us all.

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Questions to journal by:

Where have you felt slapped down in life?

Has healing come to you?  How?

What have you learned from the storms in your life? 

Is it possible to see beauty in tragedy?