Chickadee Grace

When the world threatens to consume you and your mind becomes a place cruel and cold, remember the day that you stood under the Douglas fir in the late afternoon, the way the light was saturated a deep amber so thick it had weight.

Remember the soft brown cones dripping from the feathery branches, those perfect parcels of possibility.

Remember the joyful chaos of the chickadees’ arrival, the sudden flurry of sound and movement as they gathered to feed on the seeds.

Remember how you stood almost holding your breath, your heart thrumming in your chest, becoming tree.

Remember the bright frenzy of those compact, efficient bodies flitting around your head: the chatter, the rush of wings, the smell a marriage of earth and heaven.

Remember the gust that blew in from the ocean and how it lifted the cones, shaking them like little bells—remember all of that music.

Remember how the tears emerged in your eyes, like wells full, overflowing because of all that beauty unconstrained and all around you.

Drenched in that honeyed light with your feet upon roots and your head in the branches, remember how the chickadees knit your heart back together simply by being.

Remember the breath that filled your body like a wave coming home to the shore, and then the instructions that came from everywhere and nowhere: Begin Again. And so you do.