I arrive in April.

I wake, I come alive.

The sun rises and my mind with it. My body follows and soon I am outside. I am comforted by this synchronicity with natural rhythms. It shows me all in humanity is not lost to modern advances. Would that this were my pattern year round, but I am helpless against the drowsy days and early, long nights of the darker, colder months. Somewhere in that primal part of me that is wiser and more attuned to reality, it is known that to facilitate these months of early waking and frenetic labor under the sun, long days of rest and even boredom are required to facilitate the necessary dreaming, the ever-growing drive to get outside.

I love being attuned to the movement of the sun, the waking of the birds. It all feels so right.

This morning there is a light rain so I am sitting beneath my Kousa Dogwood, dry. Thankful for its shelter, I am thinking of all the things we fail to notice in our hustle. It’s an old song, and I whistle it daily, in spite of how tiresome I find it. What would life look like, its non-necessities removed? Heaven I suppose. A want of care but for caring. Tending.

As I sit here, quiet and small under the spreading tree, a hummingbird flits up. 3 feet away it checks on a tight peony bud, then, even closer, a yet unfurled Siberian Iris. She hovers, we look at each other. I am thankful for her trust, for being able to see her up close, to hear her humming song. This is being truly awake.