Lonesome Dove

Our lonesome, one-legged dove survived the winter and visits us often every day. She's not only single-legged, she's a single female--she doesn't have a mate--which is unusual for mourning doves. Perhaps she's in mourning?

If she's lonely, she seems to have adopted us. She spends long minutes, sitting on the railing of our deck, not eating sunflower seeds, just cogitating her dove-y thoughts.

Feeling alone is one of our basic human emotions. It manifests in various flavors, such as I don't belong... or I feel left out.

On the one hand, we all belong to the human race. And on the other hand, since it's all emptiness, there's nothing and no one to belong to.

So the next time you feel like a lonesome dove yourself, remember this poem by Kahlil Gibran.

On Children
 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

Hepatica Are Blooming

Hepatica are blooming in the woods. This first wildflower pokes out of a carpet of dead leaves to dance in the spring breeze.

I have 1 little patch of them in my 10 acres. I have never seen any in my neighbors' surrounding 75 acres.

I have something you don't have. Nah-nah-nah nah-nah-nah.

How we long to take credit for situations as if they belonged to us. How we love to bolster I/me/mine.

But does the hepatica "belong" to me? It was there when i moved here 33 years ago, and with luck, it will probably be there when i die. Does that make it mine?

How we take pride in our bodies:

• I didn't need reading glasses until i was 56.
• I weigh the same as i did in high school.*
• When i bend over, my hands touch the floor.

 We say these things as if we controlled our bodies, but control doesn't work like that. Yes, we can set up some lifestyle conditions--a good diet, exercise, preventive maintenance--but unexpected things happen. That's when we know, that really, we are not in control.

Meanwhile, hepatica are blooming in the woods, spring is happening, and we are alive in such bodies as we have.


*  Not me! But i've heard a friend say this.