Swans

"There are two swans in the harbour this morning." Says the man. He walks up alongside me and the dogs, keeps pace for a while. He is thin, unshaven, rough-hewn in his clothing and demeanour, has unmistakably kind features and has a looseness around the edges that I can't quite place. I think that maybe he lives on one of the boats, illegally moored forever in the saltwater gorge near my house. He has a plastic coffee cup in his hand - I imagine him rowing himself to shore just now and walking up this path to fill it at the bakery. A watery neighbour. We chat for a few moments, about swans, the morning, and other passing wonders before he moves on. A few feet away, he turns back and tells me about the raccoons in the shrubs up ahead - as if he knows the younger of the two dogs would find that tempting.
There was something easy in the way he pulled up, kept pace, spoke of swans, an unthreatening merging into my space. A gentleness. The older dog turned her head to greet him, the younger too consumed with the crystalline smells of an early fall morning to notice - he is less concerned with making friends out of strangers anyway.
There has been a hitch in my step these past days, and both a sadness and a shock of pain after some recent news from a friend. So many layers, I am both haunted by my own unshakeable mistakes and broken-hearted at the ways people hurt and misread one another. Aching for the sadness and confusion in those around me, and at the same time unravelling from my own dark linens. This is today and last night but I remind myself of the need to hold myself and others close, but not still. We live in a quickly and constantly shifting universe.

Run

I am strangely infused with an energy these days, a life force, a push and pull of full moonlight and bodily gravity. I ran around the lake this evening, the dog at my heels and out and around as he tracked scents through the bush in his frenetic and purposeful way. In the rainfall of this burgeoning storm season I find such grace. The cool glory of the turn; the descent of summer into the blustery edges of fall. The days becoming shorter but more textured. The wind and rain whipping through the trees, across the water, pulling forth the sweetness of the poplars that rim the water's edge.

I ended my work today, enlivened by the ways in which the dots keep connecting. Purposeful and inspired. In my office-y days I stumble across poetry, Rumi even. In this world of speed and disconnect, of desk-sitting and computer-staring I find strains of life seeping into the edges of every mundane thing. Re-animation in a de-magicked universe.

Most of my mornings start with ocean walks, evenings are rich with people and movement, and slow solitude. I revel in the salt and forest-imbued air of my chosen home. I find myself returned yet again to a state of loving what is, a full recovery of a piece of me that was lost and shattered. Adrift for a while, but now arriving lightly to ground. Over these years on this island I have come to know that I am a temperate girl at heart; in moments at the mercy of the turbulence of high altitude wind, spindrift racing across a moving sky. At others rooted like the ancient trees that still remain. I have found a homeplace in the darkness and the light, at peace but not untouched by the constantly shifting tides.

Tonight the rain washes the streets clean of a long seasons' detritus, falling with the pure sounds of revelation and absolution. The dog insists that 10km is not enough, the feathers of his tail and the whites of his impish eyes challenging my insistence to sit still. More play is needed. Sometimes he is right.