Evening ride

My whole life I have thought of winter as the bare months.  January, the leafless branches, the exposure to the elements.  But today on my first bike ride on the towpath, I realized that these spring months are the ones in which we are naked, most wanton and obvious.  

Everywhere around me every single living object was guilelessly hungry for two things: the need for light and the desire to be an object of attraction.  The wild dogwoods with their pinched eared blossoms, the wild cattail stalks, the wild pink phlox.  The wild hemlock, the wild irises.  The wild grape hyacinths, the wild weeds, the wild geese barking at the wild sky.  It was not a flirtatious flaunting as much as it seemed like an innocent lifting up of the shirt. A showing of the belly.   Life in its spring skin seems to say look closer. Notice.  I have inherent beauty.

Rows of dandelions lined the path. Instead of irritants and a nuisance, they seemed like provocateurs of optimism.  Pick me up,  dare you. Blow on me like when you were a child.  Set hundreds of wishes out into the world.  Unlock them from the stem. 

And it seemed like every living being, even that turquoise bird that jarted into the woods near Johnny Cake Lock, did not remember last spring or the spring before.  They felt new in their desire, I felt new in my desire.  As if I have never loved before.  Never lost before.  Never lived before.  Never ridden this very same path before. 

I am not saying this correctly tonight.  I cannot get the words right, but I know this: I was naked tonight, in a world that is equally brazen, under a light that wants to shine on it all.  Give it a dusky glow, start a fresh patina.  And, believe me, it felt good.  So very good.