#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

. . . there are more wild flowers in this meadow
than you’ll ever see together –
cowslips, oxslips, pink mayflowers,
wild orchids, red scabious,
yellow celandines, clover, cuckoo-pint...

and as the sun curves slowly round,
and the shadow moves aside,
the flowers, saturated with the morning dew,
shine each with a crystal drop

and it’s not until you step among them
and a small cloud of moths and butterflies rise up,
that you see the meadow is so full of life,
sipping its daily bread of dew
and in an hour or so, pollen, honey;

every day this meadow
invites, invents anew
words fresh as dew –
joy, constancy, innocence,
love, freedom, rest,
wonder, praise, and gratitude –. . .
~ Excerpt from “A day, a meadow, a miracle,” by Michael Shepherd

There is a time to listen, be slow. Go for a walk in the meadow. Taking my time, step by gorgeous step. August wildflowers have arrived, they thrive in the green, wide open meadow. We, Charlie and me, walk and keep walking. We are drinking in the fresh day, with the clouds overheard. Muggy meadow, buggy woods, who cares? What variety of color. The colors come inside my eyes and run through me, I have butter-and-eggs creamy yellow running now in my veins, and the cardinal flower, it’s crimson in the brook bed, where I find it red and hearty, delicate and stunning in the muck every August. And the chicory, lilac and ease, and the button bush, blooming into orangeish red, autumnal by the river’s edge, and the frisky black-eyed-Susans being breezed around, and of course, the wild pink and orange-crazed cone flower. Spendor filled, this meadow, and my eyes and body, a kind of rest and refreshment. Home to water the gardens and the bee balm is visited by a black butterfly, and I am too. Such pollination all around. This day blows up into a wind frenzied storm of warm being blown and the rain coming too, and the branches of the trees bending and shaking, a lovely stirring of this humid air. The storm finds me on Zoom, upstairs; my daughter in the office downstairs on Zoom, and my husband and other daughter in another office on Zoom, and we are having a Bystander Training with True Story Theater that my daughter, who is a troupe member, is conducting with her colleagues. And it’s so well presented, organized and such great material, and I see the eager, attentive faces of friends and strangers and other family members (my sister from Seattle!) and it’s very enriching to be there. I am very proud of my daughter for taking this project on and producing and presenting. Kind of wowed. Now, dusk is here and still, the wind, blowing it’s August breath over all the meadows everywhere. And here, here is the one I walked in today and all the colors that are feeding me.