It’s a beautiful sunny day, only faint wisps of white cloud scattered here and there around a blue horizon.
And still the world seems bleak.
It’s a product not of the light of lack thereof, but of a governance unilluminated by any sort of wisdom, community, or care. This is end-stage colonialism, but it’s half-life will poison the earth and air and waters for centuries yet. Such is the nature of the beast, never more dangerous than when in its death throes.
And yet, in these last days of official winter, when the earth herself has already long since rounded the curve to spring, there is cause for optimism. The skies themselves, the wind and waters, bring us a message of hope.
When I say the skies do, I mean that very literally. Our clouds now are wispy affairs, curving, trailing, dancing across the sky, shifting anew each second. And yesterday, I walked outside onto the deck to see, in the southern sky, a dove-gray line of mingled clouds, small and slender, pushed by the winds into an unlikely formation: H_o_p_e. It was there no more than three seconds, this wind child’s first attempt at a cursive hand, but the letters could not have been clearer.
And so I returned inside with a renewed sense of resolve, of purpose, to see us through this latest colonial storm.
It put me in mind, in part, of this photo: two dragonflies, or, more accurately, damselflies, united in what we humans would be most likely to call love. It is certainly an expression of life, and its mechanism, too, both process and eventual product.
And it appears that, whatever else attends spring’s formal arrival, our own small world is likely to have all the seeds necessary for life this year: steady, soaking rains, a few late snows, early warmth and green, and eventually, those messengers of hope and love themselves, the dragonflies and damselflies.
We went two drought-ridden years virtually entirely without their presence, with only a very few here last year. Their return, if it occurs, will indeed be cause for hope. And more rain is predicted for Wednesday.
We are unlikely to see any messages in the clouds today. Meanwhile, the news from outside remains unrelievedly grim. But we have blue skies, clear air, a greening earth, and more precipitation in the offing. Meadowlark has come, and the crows gather, the goldfinches and flickers and piñon jays, and a Lewis’s woodpecker, too. It will not be many more weeks before the first hummingbirds and honeybees and butterflies arrive.
And with them, we have every cause to believe, will be the dragonflies, small messengers of love and life, here with a message of hope.
~ Aji
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