Hello Earth #13

Hello again, Earth.

Here I am, in the late afternoon, the sky already dark at 5pm. My home feels like a cave.

Earth, this winter evening you've created encloses and enfolds me, bleak and cosy at once, after the day of rain. Yesterday was different, one serendipitously fine day amongst rainy ones. I went out for lunch on my friends’ patio. There were five of us, a couple visiting as well as me. We’ve known each other since 1999, when we were all neighbours (and my Andrew was still very much alive). 

Leaning in, we feasted, drank good rosé, and reminisced. There were vegetable and fish curries — none quite hot enough for me, whose Mum grew up in India (despite the cook describing one as ‘poisonously hot’) but not so mild as to be tasteless either. There was the most delectable tart-sweet mango sorbet. Later we strolled around our hosts’ garden; I photographed roses, camellias and begonias, and a tiny turtle figurine in a huge dish. On the way home I stopped to snap the cloudy late sky just before sundown. But now I am back in my cave. I think I have been managing isolation well — and I have, compared with many — but, even eschewing hugs and refraining from getting too close, it was surprisingly good to dress up, go out and have real live conversations with real live people (not through a screen). 

Listing gratitudes: my years in this Caldera, the people I’ve met here, the times we’ve had, how so many of us were led here, called here ... for the blessing of this magical land, this ancient earth, this cradle of life forms including human, this realm of living Spirit.

Offering you, Earth, my thanks for this wondrous life I’ve been blessed with. It was good to get the miseries over early in my life, to travel more and more towards fulfilment. I like where I am. 

Sharing (a couple of months later) with Poets and Storytellers United, at Writers' Pantry #31.