I love Leonard Cohen. I delight in parodies, and I can’t help smiling when someone manages to bring humor, affection, and talent to bear on a bad situation.
If you watch tv or keep an eye on social media, you may already have seen this, but I couldn’t keep from posting the video for those who might otherwise miss it. Thanks to Jean at The Misadventures of Widowhood for including it in her blog today.
While Wilmington and Charleston airports briefly closed due to Hurricane Florence, Houston airports have been instituting ground stops because of severe thunderstorms.
Irritating as a ground stop may be for travelers, there’s a time to wait things out. Here, a seed from green milkweed (Asclepias viridis) settles to ground and prepares to wait out the rain that interrupted its own flight.
There’s nothing particularly charming about flood waters. Muddy, debris-filled and insistent, they rage indiscriminately, sparing nothing in their path.
Nonetheless, once waters recede, tokens of their presence can be surprisingly delicate. Unbroken grasses bend beneath invisible flows; trees wear faint watermarks with pride.
Among the jumbled plants, a few leaves dangle. Their thin, crisp coating of sand has begun flaking away; their striated surface recalls a season of growth.
Given over to death, they echo life: stirring before the wind, they murmur and sigh, casting off remnants of a strange and fearsome time.
