Appreciation of Beauty

There is a persimmon tree outside my window. It has just recovered it’s leaves from the barren winter months. The green is so vibrant it makes me feel more alive just looking at it. I wonder sometimes when the tree is fully naked, exposed, just limbs and trunk if it knows that it will return even more beautiful each spring? Do we know that of ourselves? When life has stripped us back to bark and dirt and roots and we are raw from the emotions and the tumult- can we find within us the whisper of what is to come, the promise of our own rebirth?

We are the nature we observe, we are cyclical and seemingly chaotic and beautiful and rugged. We are the mountain that is unperturbed by the restless world, as it sits firmly planted to the earth observing it’s surface changing on all sides.  We are also the wind that kisses the flowers and gently holds the birds aloft, that pulls the hair from your tight bun and makes a mess of you with it’s teasing, like a cheeky beloved that musses your hair and pulls you into a loving embrace. I can see bees from my window, I can see bugs and squirrels and blue jays. The bossiest blue jays that take no shit and can be punishing in their assertiveness. It’s all a little window into my own self, a current that connects to the river that is me. The leaves of the persimmon are hungry with life and the sun just bathes them, an outpouring, an offering of all that is nourishing and life-giving and full. That too is us. That too is me.