Messages From Carrie
Bee Balm and Flying Things
June 18th, 2010
Outside my bedroom window is a stand of deep pink and red bee balm flowers in full glorious bloom. I just counted fourteen elegant orange butterflies and twelve roly-poly yellow and black bumblebees among the flowers. I love how the silent butterflies are so deliberate and contemplative as they slowly open and close their wide flat wings. I also love how the small winged bumblebees blithely defy all laws of aerodynamics and gravity as they happily hum, rummage and rumple thru the bee balm petals. I love how the bumblebees propel themselves forward like a toddler who has just learned to run - leaning out and almost tumbling forward with momentum. There is an honesty to the movements of the bumblebee and butterfly. They are each and every one so pleased to be wholly and truly just what they are. Every tree is a tree. That is true. Every thing that flies is a flying thing. They are family and connected by a fine gossamer thread that reaches from green thing to green thing and holds the flying world weightless and hanging in the air. The trees recognize one another by the smell of dirt on their roots and gloss of their leaves. The flying world recognizes one another by the smell of sky on their wings. And yet, some fly like hawks, alert and watching. They call from above and circle, keen eyed and drifting on small updrafts. Some glide silently in the night like owls. Some beat their small wings at an amazing speed like the humming bird or the humble bumble. Some drift, some float, some struggle to just stay aloft. And yet, they fit, they are all family and it all makes sense.
I thrill today to the smell of dirt and roots. I smile at the flying things that lift up all around me. I am grateful for the thread that pulls through what connects them and the differences that make them so interesting and unique. I am in love with the bees and the bee balm, the silent butterflies and the calling hawk.
I am that happy to be alive in the midst of all this life. Today I think I will walk out in the woods and sing.
