June Infusion

Because the weather is more unpredictable than ever, it reached into the high eighties from the end of May right into these first days of June. It’s not that unusual except the high temperatures lasted for over a week. Nobody could complain except for those who still hadn’t excavated their summer clothes. Flowers and insects and baby critters were welcomed into a benign and nurturing world, resplendent with abundance we humans enjoyed to the fullest.

The sky was often hazy from smoke originating from massive the Canadian forest fires. I once wrote a poem called When Your Smoke Gets in Our Skies. It was rather melancholy, so I will spare you, but I wrote it years ago when I still lived in upstate NY. Hotter, more destructive fires are predicted for our country as well in the future.

On a canoe trip my husband and I took years ago with a group in the northern Ontario wilderness, we had to camp one night on the banks of a huge burn. I will never forget our dash onshore to get a green bough smoke fire going to withstand the onslaught of blackflies that descended. We wasted no time setting up our tents, diving inside, and zipping them closed. The poor cook on duty that night sat within the wafting smoke to make our meal. He endured the loss of some flesh as the black flies were like kamikaze pilots flying off with chunks of the only mammal around. As we paddled past the burn in the morning, I saw miles and miles of blackened stumps like nothing I had ever witnessed before. I see it still in my mind’s eye.

Here in northeast Ohio, our wildlife is more pond oriented than the wolves, moose, otters, lynx, and bears we spied on that trip. I sat by a pond the other day and wrote this.

Spring Pond         5/1/23

Willow seeds swarm crazily

on white wings

inedible mayflies 

the fish aren’t fooled

competing bull frogs bellow

territorial seductions

native lupines and daisies

draw flittering insects on the shore

tiny willow tree dreams snagged

on my sunhat, my lap

have more hope for dry land

than those gradually sinking below

the rippling surface

where their mother tenderly

leans over swaying

her green hula skirts in the breeze

I am blessed that I am still able to go outside on my electric scooter to engage with our 110-acre campus as much as I can. My mobility is still declining, and I am pretty sure I will arrange for infusions with one of two drugs that do have some effect on halting the progress of secondary progressive MS. I am to see my new neurologist again in early July, so I will include a report on that next month. It took me a while until I was able to envision receiving poison in the name of healing into my body, but I will infuse the joy and hope of this season in preparation.