“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly.” I don’t know who said this, but I can’t debate it.
I am making and taking a broad swipe of a subject this month. That subject is life. Life itself is an enigma; an imagined reality. Or is it? I am not here to answer, but to simply entertain it. My Father once told me, “Rob, live your life, stop trying to define it.” Well, 63 buttery-sweet years later, I have to agree. I have slipped around it; on it; under it; over it and maybe through it, more than once… but at the end of the day, Dad was right—we hit our pause button to seek definition far too often, only to understand those moments and reasons we live life. Maybe it’s as easy as being; maybe it is bigger. And while we share in it, side by side, it is different for each one of us. What is life: In my world, it is pulling out my ukulele and playing with great joy in my spring and summer gardens. It is that perfectly cooked pasta; a winter’s fog, so thick, I feel as if I am in autumn’s chilled elixir. It is waking; napping; and dreaming. It is exhaling the knowing of peace, and the inhaling for its search. This next month, it will be laying my Mother to rest by my Father: All the while, celebrating all she was in life, what she gave to life and what she took from life only to give life to others. Life: The amassed stardust; the giggles in the night; and the symphony of the birds song; the genetic reminders of our family before us and the forecast of family to come; the spring flower
pushing through the frozen loam after a snowy spring storm; laughter and the sorrow shared in a room of tears. I wrote a piece, a few years back, named: Lost at Sea. A composer and arranger found it and put music to it and sent it to me. I was stunned. Because what I had written, I considered a finished piece…and still, his music elevated it, like a peacock getting its adult feathers—I heard more; felt more; saw more. I can actually say, he gave it a new life. So I ask, is this the equation of life? We live our piece of it, and with another’s adding, life becomes so? Is it impossible to actually know life, without another contributing? I am beginning to think so. I am beginning to understand, I would not have given this a thought, without thinking about what I could write for this month’s welcome. Maybe there is no sound when the tree falls in the forest, if we are not there to hear it. Maybe there is nothing thrilling about a calving glacier, without a bird to ride atop its wake. Maybe marriage is the music to true love’s poetry. I only know, these are the thoughts which stitch the tapestry of life and make it worth living. We think we know life once we realize we are living it, but at every corner, we just may be the caterpillar—and I am of the thought, I will enjoy each step; each pebble beneath my feet; each mud-puddle that whimsically time-travels me back to my youth—with my tens of legs–where I don’t simply look for the butterfly to come from the caterpillar, but be one.
The distant look; The muffled cry;
The secret thoughts one protects.
The scrim playing its part In conversation.
These are signs Of an end. The brief notice of beauty:
Like a butterfly In flight before us;
Oceans deep; Words small;
Sun’s rising;Moon’s setting;
And each star,
Shares in our soul. One does not pretend
To understand life.
One cannot pretend
To understand mortal ends.
We only are.
Believing the intended;
Believing in love; Believing …
This is all we know.
So Be It,
For we are the gifts in motion:
We are the explorers.
We are the lovers;
We are the poets;
We are the dreamers.
We are the monarchs:
While even in our darkest moments,
We fly through life;
As it flies through us.