The Voice of the Turtle

I never thought I'd link to something on fox, but I will link this.
And though we cleared the pantry and scrubbed the house, re-potted the orchids, washed and dusted, my heart is not in this year's spring.
You know intellectually that everything has its season-but it doesn't still the sadness of watching your Mom become as a child. Mine has been ill, is losing her thinking completely, needs oxygen- she'll get Wednesday, is fighting infection and has lost her vitality in just a few short weeks steep decline- to remind me that we are coming to the days when each is so irretrievable.
Spring break will come for me in a few days. As a trial by fire I expect.
But right now I'm doing my best to just be remembering a day at a time.

I used to have a book divided by seasons-poetry- that has gone missing in storage, but I'm promised all of the poetry will be retrieved one summer day. In the anthology this verse below was so beautiful. Short and yet, capturing my intense love of the fewest words, most ordinary sound, arranged like a balm.  I never saw the turtle as God-as I see on-line looking it up that is the allusion. I simply saw the turtle as a turtle. An ancient, wise and slow being that roams this earth, overlooked, distant, enigmatic. Perhaps we have it wrong, maybe when we finally evolve we are the fleeting moment of a butterfly, or a buzz on the pond, a creature that lives without need for word or ego. Not able to fathom the beings that are using, shooting, consuming, polluting and striving to be free- but rather simply free. Moving in the warmth of our sun.

It is a very different time in my life when I know this seems odd to say- but I can see more clearly and just within my heart. No one that really matters to me, or to our life, would miss that these are the days when I need love and strength, connection, remembrance, care. Plus the forgiveness of those I have ever hurt. Most especially within my family.

Song of Solomon 2:12

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing [of birds] is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

- King James Version (Pure Cambridge 'Authorized Version')