"You think winter will
never end, and then,when you don't expect it, when you have almost forgotten
it, warmth comes and a different
light. Under the bare trees the
wildflowers bloom so thick you can't walk without stepping on them. The pastures turn green and the leaves come.
You look around presently,
and it is summer. It has been dry a
while, maybe, and now it has rained. The
world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in
one arm and leading another by the hand.
Every puddle in the lane is ringed with sipping butterflies that fly up
in a flutter when you walk past in the late morning on your way to get the
mail.
And then it is fall and the
cornfields are ripe and the calves are fat and shiny and the wooded valley sides
are beautiful with color. The sun is
bright, the air clear, and the shadows dark.
There is the feeling of completion and storing up and getting ready.
You have consented to time
and it is winter. The country seems
bigger, for you can see through the bare trees.
There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the
ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect
and beautiful. You think you will never
forget.
You think you will never
forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it
was. To know it, you have to be living
in the presence of it right as it is happening.
It can only return by surprise.
Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that
are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind.
And so you have
a life that you are living only now, now, and now and now, gone before you can
speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment,
in this presence." --Hannah Coulter
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