Sunday, May 27, 2012

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, 
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
--W.B. Yeats


Those are good, thoughtful questions, aren't they?  I've been thinking about questions like these a lot lately, as I've been so busy and consumed by many things, great and small.  Not blogging, always feeling like I'm running to the next thing, too many balls in the air.  In the evenings to decompress I like to just sit quietly.  No blogging.  No Netflix movie.  Limited plans.  And I think, am I the root, the blossom or the bole?  If I had to pick, I'd say: the root.  Grounded, responsible, stubborn.  Some days I'd prefer to be the bole and just drift off in a puff!  And who wouldn't want to consider herself a blossom?  Hello!  I know, I know...I'm all three...we all are.  We're all the dancer, we're all the dance.  But I like to think about things like this, when it's dark and still and the world is quiet.  





I do my best every day to really live it.  I'm trying to be a quieter mom (read: less of a yeller). I'm striving for peace in my daily life.  Less worry.  Letting things go.  Saying yes nearly every dang time when a kid asks for another popsicle; today Jack had 6 and Caroline had 4.  Who cares???  Gotta go to the store tomorrow for more!  Last night, the kids and I took our neighbor's puppy for a walk to the park and around town a bit.  It's a great pleasure to walk after dinner; I just love it!  Jack even found the first salmon berries of the year and climbed down a steep creek bank to get some for all of us.  When we got home, we sat at the top of our driveway and had a popsicle. The concrete was still really warm from the day's heat, the sun was going down and the sky was pretty, and we just enjoyed the 10 minutes of sitting there, slurping down the 'cicles, trying not to let one side break off and fall on the ground, soaking up each other and the moment.  This is what matters to me the most: dancing the dance.

2 comments:

  1. Considering how busy you've been, take another look at the first lines of that stanza: "Labour is blossoming and blooming where/ The body is not bruised to pleasure soul/ Nor..." One of my favorite poems, though lately I'm thinking often of the bee-loud glade in "Innesfree"--Dad

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  2. dANce on, friend, dANce on.

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