Self-Portrait

I wish I was twenty and in love with life

and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!

There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side

the roses are blooming and finding their labor

no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea

shining like a song, like a body

I want to touch

though I'm not twenty

and won't be again but ah! seventy. And still

in love with life. And still

full of beans

So here it is Tuesday for me, and as I said in yesterday's blog, this is the day where I "hit the week running." Looking back at yesterday's "undoing" I pray that I gave enough time to touch the essence of life, so my love can fill over into compassion in the week to come.

Honestly, though, my listening never seems enough to take in all the love and wonder there is. As I meditate in the morning on our backyard porch I am ever distracted. First I see the gopher tortoise working on her burrow, splashing sand in an ever widening expanse, and then comes the chattering Pileated Woodpecker foraging on the ground with her ridiculous red top hat. I want to jump up from my cushion and go running out to be with them, to be a digger and a pounder. But I too, like Mary, have old legs. It takes a while to get up from the cushion as the arthritic pain signals my mid age.

A curse perhaps this age? Hmmm. Maybe not. For in my increasing stillness, my Monday day offs, my meditation, and my slowing down physically, I find that through my companions I am indeed running, digging, flying, giggling, playing soccer, and dancing with the best and worst of them. I am twenty again on the verge of adulthood just having scored a goal during soccer and I am the confused octarian with dementia in the home down the road.

Somehow in the alternating lost and found quality to our shared lives, may the blessing of loving life stay with us.

How do you paint your self-portrait? Where do you find that you are full of beans, running and climbing in spirit if not in spirit?