To connect. To converse. To respond. To listen. To silence.
Through poetry.
As the car crests the hill, the valley and bay unveil themselves in the April sun.
It is the kind of light that as it bounces from blue to green to gold, it fools you into thinking that sand dunes on the far side are waves crashing into calmer waters.
This is new space in new time — two days after the clocks have gone forward. It is his first time returning to this place since summer time commenced.
This year, he will be more resolute about appreciating the lengthening brightness. He will not be so immersed in being busy that the longest day of the year will ambush him as it has done so many times before. This year, he is ahead of the mark, ahead of the crest of the wave. He will not rest until that crest has passed.
But as the car descends the valley slope, the sweeping beauty of ocean quickly fades from view. As speed limits lower and the convergence of a small town approaches, he notices golden reeds by brown bog streams, trickling away from the low-lying bridge that the car flows across.
He sees one daughter in his rear-view mirror, tired from the long bus journey, reading.
The older daughter sits beside him in the passenger seat, and sings along with him as he plays some repeated favourites of his on a Spotify playlist. Some songs never get boring.
He has his sunglasses on for the first time this year. And thinks of sitting with his family on a bench in August sun some years ago, the gathered colour of that long summer glistening on their skin as big oak trees from a clear wall of green and bark behind them.
On their way up, the two daughters did some of their favourite things — including visiting bookshops at their points of departure and arrival. A most fitting way to book-end a road trip!
These are the early days come again — that time when the sun is powering up, and winter is powering down. Both seem to greet the other, both are passing by him, leaving their traces, beckoning their promises.
He won't take it all in — where mountains and oceans meet the sky, infinite valleys, villages and rivers run beyond the mind's horizon. But as the bubble-gum-blue car hugs one bend after another, his eyes periodically trace the passing colours of air, while his mind casts the net of the past forward into the teeming waters of the future.
Tomás Ó Ruairc 2 April 2024
"…hello to today, to this world, to you." Sifting the Silence #93
"What you truly are has never had an argument with life, you have always been in love with this…" - John Astin
"But that's the thing about having vision. It's not about always being right about the future. It's about constantly learning what's right and striving for it." - Daniel Jonce Evans writing of his wife Rachel Held Evans (d. 2019)
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank
"Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments." Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't speak because I know that something is true. I speak because I hope that conversation between us will unveil a little more truth. Mini-me (Inspired by the writings of Mark Nepo)
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