Construct

This is the last view through these woody sticks this year. In less than two weeks, a solid wall of green leafy matter will fill in every blank. The fence and the house and the rest of my neighbor's yard will vanish behind a tapestry of grape leaves and maple leaves, choke cherry and raspberry. In the mean time, I can watch the flowers on the dog wood swell and bloom and drop like spring snow onto the ground around the tree. Another pink bush, I do not know the name, flowers as well. These will finish their work before the leaves have come. The proximity of houses will then disappear. Each of us will have more privacy in spring and summer. But I do not mind my neighbors in the way that they seem to mind me. Is it the fear of loss that attaches itself to every item they have stuffed into their house? The still uncertain relationship that they themselves have with that inner voice, and such uncertainty causing a habitual dislike of exterior voices - lest they somehow foul the nest, as it were. These might be insulting thoughts, could they be heard. Or they might be that essential love we are all missing these days. Too much may overwhelm, not enough does other harm. And it is not even the abstract to which I appeal. I have thought and pondered and wondered with some ferocity this spring season. I will not accept an idle excuse. We are all blessed with eyes and all given the same quotient of reason and wildness. Childhood, from which so many have still not emerged, is merely a luxury of abundance that trains us to want even more. We are quite on track - quite on this track - with these unfettered appetites. But the best individual is the one who recognizes the whole and acts with dignity. We do not love our neighbors because at bottom, we are ashamed. Either they are with us in a superficial skate across the physicality of life and only use language as a toy to keep the truth at bay, or we fear they know our secret. Silence draws the conscience and the conscience tells no lies. So, go ye brave cells of maple and grape, of choke cherry and raspberry, cover these open spaces with your perfectly tuned photon collectors, fill our eyes with the joy of life, let us forget these too grounded thoughts, too much like wild grape vines choking a pine sapling by the edge of a campground road.

And speaking of choking. It is a mad waving of hands and a pointing of fingers as the reprehensible men who will stand trial one day for war crimes they committed slowly back toward the door hoping to make a successful departure. There are words that emerge to define a travesty, sometimes they become associated with a single name. These devastating early days of the 21st century are no doubt what we will mean when we use the insult "bush" in the not too distant future.