Bedazzled

Was there ever an Earth not filled with flowers and green leafing plants and trees? Was there ever an atmosphere unpleasant to the skin? It is a season of forgetting, this Spring, of senses so overwhelmed by beauty that the short cold days of winter, the long trial of waiting, the forever anticipation, endless, has been forgotten (or forgiven). An accident on 117 has slowed my pace to that of the saunterer. I can gaze into the wetlands just north of the roadway along the stretch right past the Sudbury border. The forest frame is still visible, but it is fading behind the greening and reddening and flowering tapestry of this eastern Massachusetts forest ecosystem's Spring salute.

Although, we must be mindful that the forest ecosystem is a misnomer; I watch the trees renew from the road, a road, passing houses, behind traffic, we are in the suburbs. This is socially, culturally, economically, hooked to Boston and New York and an urban world of global trade. Our links stretch far past this fading forest frame. This morning, for example, I remembered my time in Buenos Aires. Spring often reminds me of that beautiful southern city. In my mind's eye, the slow walk I would make from Avenida Jorge Newberry down along Avenida Libertador. Hot mornings as I went to teach young business men and women proper ways to make conversation in English, cooled by the spreading branches of enormous towering platano trees. It reminded me of home, those walks, but I didn't know why until returning to New England and seeing the sycamore everywhere. The same tree, different hemisphere. I felt the connection then, but couldn't have spoken it until now. Our links are many across the globe today.

I notice, too, a pleading tone in Bush's speeches these days. Will he make the full conversion before his time is up? We can only hope.