The Seeds of Life in the Midst of Death

There is a coolness residual in this early morning - a faint signal that summer is waning, autumn stealthily approaching. If the sky is to be believed, there might be rain today. My hose-shaped hand would welcome the sabbatical.

It's Saturday morning, a day that ever since childhood has unfolded at a slower, more relaxed and reflective pace - even these days, at this stage of my life, when any day could afford the same. Sprinkling water into the flower pots, I allow the heaviness of the week to slip away. Death has been too much in the air these successive days; death, both metaphorical and material; both feathered and foreshadowed.

For some cosmic reason, half of the appliances in our home took this opportunity to die - the kitchen disposal, a countertop oven, a refrigerator, the washer and dryer. All of them too soon - too young, though of course the warranties had expired. All week I've been the crotchety old man decrying the cheapening of our manufacturing, cursing the planned obsolescence, and lamenting our senseless additions to some landfill. And then a young hen, newly introduced to the flock from its security in the barn enclosure was viciously snuffed out in a gruesome manner I'm having trouble erasing from my mind. And then news of a friend's cancer, dormant for a deceiving time and presumed gone, returned. All this, with the dull ache of last week's multiple mass shootings still throbbing in our soul.

I'm weary of the pall.

Good, then, to see new blossoms opening in the pots. The chirping of the surprise baby chick bounding down the ramp of the coop as I open the hatch evokes a spontaneous smile.  I inhale with the myriad sounds of morning - the roosters' antiphonal crowing, the cheeps and rasps of crickets, cicadas and birds.  There are blossoms on the squash vines, the okra bushes and the miscellaneous pepper plants foretelling good things to come. And there are tomatoes to pick; tomatoes, red and juicy and full of seeds...

...the promise of good things further still down the road.  And did I mention there is a chance of rain?


There is more to these days than death after all.