365 Days

By Éabha 2019

The first storm of that year woke us up early and kept us awake. The sky was darkened and the sunlight hidden, and we rejoiced as our skins embraced the rain.

We stood in a circle, hand in identical hand, and danced around as the rain beat us down, gave us life, let us drink in the joy.

Cupped hands outreached, we deank more than we needed, but now was not a time for frugality.

Cups around us open and fill, we take their water and spill it over ourselves, into our mouths, relish the taste of wood and of sap, of growing life.

As our dance reaches its zenith, I leap and brush my hand, held high above my head, against a cool, smooth leaf, and a crescendo of thunder follows a flash, bright enough to illuminate the circle, the ellipse, the ever-changing shape of us.

The storm dies, the rain slows, slows and stops, and we become calm, and we go somewhere else, to do something else.

When the first crystalline flakes began to fall, we gathered ourselves. We said goodbye to those well-loved leaves, those wooden shapes of wondrous complexity, and we turned our backs on cold and wet - we turned towards the eternal summer.

There were some who lingered, who ran hands over living things with love, who stretched hands out to catch flakes. I was young yet; I was not among them. They were those who expected not to see another summer.

I fixed my eyes ahead and took a step. We moved together, onwards.

The living things around us begin to show their young; the average age of the world around us drops and the children that are soon to be, begin to stir.

There are new pairs of eyes to blink at the world, new pairs of hands to hold. We look in awe at these small new things - until they grow. As they grow, they become part of the group. It as as if there was never a time without them.

As this happens, the awe lessens, but the care does not.

The year grows old, heating and aging. We all feel the passage of time, we all feel the changes since we were last here.

We are growing hot, we are growing restless and uncomfortable, but we must wait, wait for one more happening before we move down to the welcome cold.

We hear the calls late one night. The words are different, but the meaning unmistakeable. We are here - we are here!

We stand and although we are tired, we wake ourselves and alert ourselves. They are here.

We welcome them with friendliness, with the giving and receiving of gifts. A child my age shyly hands me a wide ripe fruit; I gift her with a cup of shelled nuts. Then the children go and drift slowly to sleep, mingling shyly and talking as well as we can.

The next day, we wake and we walk. The young ones are confused, the adults are resigned. We will go back, we go far away.

We go to wait for the rain again.