I thought about ants. They work so hard and industriously, making kingdoms on earth. In New Mexico, USA they seemed innocent enough, even noble, crawling busily over the high desert floor. At the time, I had traveled much and made art for over thirty years. Deep down I felt like stopping everything to simply become an observer. Watch ants work every day. Meditate.
Almost two decades ago, after my oldest daughter died, a poem came to me and included ants as a metaphor for elemental spirits of the world:
Angels and Ants
My pen tries to speak,
but the language it has learned
is too sublime
for mere scratchings.
You taught me a new tongue—
the expressions of angels.
Alas, an ocean is between us
which cannot be passed.
Wandering alone in a daze
I am left with the ants
traveling over the dust of this world.
Amy and I have been living in Oaxaca, Mexico now for almost a year. For the first time in my life my home is in a place without winter. We grow flowers year around. The nearby plant nursery always welcomes us with myriad colors, exotic trees and shrubs and prices a fraction of what we would pay in the USA. Blooming rose shrubs cost 1.50 USD. Our eyes are dazzled and we make sure to smell them, to be certain of fragrance.
Destroyed jasmine plants
I planted seven roses, caring for them, watching them slowly take hold and grow new leaves. Suddenly they were almost wiped out. By ants. Not just the roses, but many other of our trees, vegetables, and shrubs were being decimated. The jasmine plants in pots by our back door were denuded. By day I could not see much activity, but at night, by flashlight I saw legions of ants in long lines carrying cut leaves to their holes in the ground.
The old lady, matriarch of the family who owns the nursery, when asked what could be done about ants, looked us steady in the eye and said, “kill them”.
I dug up my roses and put them in pots, then took them to my roof patio where they have revived and are producing marvelous blooms. Meanwhile, sadly I have had to declare war on the ants.
Lluvia is the Spanish word for rain. Now that the wet season has come to Oaxaca, the rain falls most days—and it is sweet. The dry, brown landscape so brittle, hears the thunder and opens its arms to embrace the downpour. The earth has softened and breathed again, changing from brown to green.
Typically, the rain arrives with the clouds that roll in during late afternoon and evening. Temperatures are cooler, and water cleanses all it touches. I like it. The sun always come out again but the earth is rejuvenated and never gets bone dry. Plants that I thought were dead are showing verdure and unique beauty. It is like a phoenix rising from ashes.
A
big wind knocked over a panel of sheetrock in my backyard. It struck a
jade plant I had placed outdoors for the summer months. The jade is
old—over forty years, and has sentimental value to me. Since it arrived as a twig in a pot, it has been with me through thick and thin over
the decades, bearing silent witness to my life and changes.
When the panel hit, it's main limb broke off, as
if a person had an accident and lost their leg and arm. I grieved a
few minutes, then determined to care for my plant and watch it
reshape itself from its deformed state. I saved the broken piece to
put in soil and see if it would live.
It
has been several months, and both plants are living—the power
of regeneration.
This
is what I have had to do many times. The wind of fate breaks like
a storm upon my life and though I feel crushed, even unable to move,
something stirs within to regenerate and flourish again.