I have not been taking as many photographs this summer.  It is part of the paralysis of my grieving for my youngest daughter.  On the other hand, I have been dancing and writing more.  There are days when none of that creative juice is available and on those days, I pull weeds.  It is contemplative, small, focused.  I can get engrossed and be distracted at the same time.

Some days begin with a wave of grief.  Other days, I get tripped up unexpectedly.  Today I found a three-legged turtle struggling on the road on my way home.  As I raced to take it to the Audubon before they closed, I wept.  Something about the way it was moving and not moving on the road – I thought at first it was an injured bird – set me off.  Leaving the Audubon, I had a full crashing surf of sadness – the pull over to the side of the road because you can’t see kind.

Other days are quieter, but the thing, the situation, the problem, the wound is always there.  Pam talked about the way the stress and obsession of this badly troubled, runaway child is like a news scroll 24/7, running under everything.  You are never free, never without that ache.

Outside, the lilies are blooming anyway.  The cicadas are thrumming, and the sun is rising and setting every day.  I have to remember to breathe, something that is not troubling the birds, the horses, the dogs.  Mary Oliver, my poetry angel, reminds me of this in The Sun:

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly
oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?