The Summer Nap
Slipping from slumber, I open my eyes to six goldfinches conversing over lunch in my hanging basket-feeder full of nuts and seeds.
My green garden chair, in which I recline, has, this summer, been overtaken by twisting ribbons of star jasmine, which twine their way around the legs and up over the arms. It seems to tether me to the earth.
Mr. Squirrel has not stopped chattering the whole time I have been out here, although I lost track of his conversation somewhere on the way to dreamland.
Next to me, a fat black bee, a sure harbinger of summer, buzzes on the cluster of tiny flowers at the tip of the Butterfly Bush. The Monarchs dip and dive through the sunshine, dancing in the air.
Peace settles over me like a wash of warm water. It’s like when I hold my breath at the bottom of the pool and peer up at the treetops on the other side of that silvered surface — everything is in movement up above, while stillness encases me down there.
I find it hard to move my limbs, still somnolent. I snatch for the remnants of the dreamworld, which I inhabited just moments ago.
I dreamt the other night about my Grandmother, who has been gone now for many years. She seemed so vibrant and young and alive while we chatted and strolled the beach. I wonder about reality. Is this world really any more real than that of the dream? Where is my Grandmother now?
In the garden, I am suspended in an overwhelming sense of connection, of belonging to the web of the universe’s imaginings. It’s hard not to see it when nature continues all around me, oblivious to my presence after I have been still for a while.
A flutter of wings, rusty brown, lands in the feathery top of my Australian Tree Fern. The “new arrival,” the Scaly-Breasted Munia, who looks as if someone has drawn continuous crescents across his white chest with a black Sharpie marker, has discovered the backyard feeders. More timid than the Goldfinches, he lets them test the waters before becoming brave enough to explore the variety of seeds, nuts and fruit that I have placed out for the birds. He looks at me with those red eyes, and I hardly dare to breathe for fear of startling him.
A little more certain now, he pirouettes down to the feeder containing the oiled sunflower seeds, which seem to be his favorite.
A hummingbird, one of the migrating Rufouses who show up mid-summer and terrorize the locals, screeches to no one in particular, and then settles onto a perch of his sugar-water feeder. Almost immediately, another Rufous shows up. His wings move so fast that he looks like the blur of an angel suspended between worlds. The first hummer, forgetting momentarily about his meal, darts off after the second one, clicking and screaming as they dive up into a tunnel of light.
A pair of butterflies appeared the other day. Their elongated butter-yellow wings blinked with a sky-blue eye right at the tips. I have never seen them before, and I haven’t seen them since. I hope that they return.
I remember a conversation I had with my philosophy professor father when I was young. Perched on a rock next to me, by a camp-fire which sparked stars into the blackness of the night, he asked me, “How do you know that you are not a butterfly dreaming that you are human?” At first, I laughed, thinking that this was a ridiculous question. But, the older I have gotten, the more I wonder — how do we really know?
A red-orange dragonfly, with double-decker wings so sheer that you can see the sun glinting right through them, skims the breeze. In contrast to the hummers, he is so “chill,” just catching the eddies like a surfer in the air.
My eyelids begin to grow heavy again. The silky warmth of the sunshine caresses my arms. I feel the tug of that “other plane” reaching for me, and I allow myself to slip beneath the surface again, relishing the luxury of a summer nap.
I hope that you enjoyed this moment of summer. You might also enjoy a story about the Rufous Hummingbirds:
or about the Scaly-Breasted Munia:
And this is a story about reality and the conversation which I had with my father about butterflies.
Story and photos ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.
