may day

 From an excersise in knowing the earth in Nature Observation, a course with Michael D'Aleo

Lying on the ground I felt so welcomed by the earth.  After some moments of battling with my mind and the base desire to find the right answer, I started to feel.  I focused a question in between my shoulder blades along my spine and kept returning to listening with my body.  At first the screeching, squabbling gulls and the shrill insistence of some other birds distracted me. ‘Shhhhh, I am trying to listen to what the earth has to tell me’ and I laughed.. mother earth speaks through many voices.  Just as there was so much activity above me, I imagined so much below. ‘ Shhh, just listen’  I told myself again.  And then I felt a wave of energy lap across my back.  ‘Did I imagine it?’ But again fainter, as if disappointed by my doubt, I felt it again and again, like the rhythms of waves landing and retreating on a shore.  The earth is full of water and life here.  The earth still feels to be reveling in the new potential now that its form is above the water.  This jubilant attitude is louder in spring, so excited that it can surface in greens, blues and yellows, the colors of beginnings. The forces of growth and persistence  re-emerge fortified by metals deep in the earth as activity retreated far from the long blanket of snow. The air is full of bees now, birds chirp and squawk and a butterfly just grazed my curls, yet again, a ladybug (with 14 spots!) lands on my knee.