The cool gathering damp of the June evening creeps into the kitchen.
From a chair at the table just to the right of the door I look out onto the back deck.
Two chairs and a small glass table nestle into a corner of the railing that surrounds the upper level of the deck.
A row of Rose-of-Sharons rises like a wall behind the chairs and the railing, and already is threatening to make a twisted mockery of the chain link fence that separates ours from our neighbours' yard. A separation now more conceded and softened by the spreading Rose of Sharon wall, than enforced by the symmetric geometric wire of the fence.
And beyond that greening growth between growing friends, at increasing distance stand the taller and rising maples and pines and other trees anonymous to me growing up and covering the escarpment face.
Birds sing their evening songs. Last chirrups and lilting chants in advance of night that soon shall come with its silences.
Crickets offer their own sweet endless chorus. Dogs bark. Some near; others far off in the slowly darkening distance.
Such a soothing calming backdrop to my sitting here and writing. Sitting here and savouring.
Or is all this not backdrop at all? Is maybe Earth and its seasons and its creatures and its unending daily and nightly play of light and shade and sound and song and silence rising and falling without end really maybe the main show? The headline act? Centre stage? The real thing for which all else is secondary and meant to be only complementary? And complimentary?
And am I, sitting at a table beside and inside an opened door, a mere passing observer? A witness quickly passing and surpassed? Simply grateful for this moment to see and hear and know the glory that is. That always has been. That always will be.
Even apart from me. Continuing even after I close the door.
And (oh, is this the grace?) always willing to welcome me back into awareness the next time and the next time and the next time after that, too, that I open it.
