Dis ya version?

The other morning, I watched a songbird hang in the wind like a drone. It was stitching the sky together with its bright thread of sound. Perhaps it thought I was a threat, warbling out a warning to nearby creatures. Maybe it was frightened or worried. It was a beautiful bird nonetheless. 

Sometimes I watch the shore, and the ocean is restless, white at the mouth and gnawing at the rocks. Sometimes it is wide and unbothered, a taut canvas of deep blue. No one calls it the angry ocean or the tired ocean. Swelling, retreating, crashing, it is always just the ocean.

In the afternoons, there is a cloud parade over the hill out my window. For a moment, there is a cat, then a face, then a skinny spoon, and then something incomprehensible. All the while, no matter the shape, they are just clouds.

In the sky, the moon thins to a sliver of silver, a fingernail clipped and cast into the blue of early morning. You could almost lose it. Weeks later, it is round and impossible to ignore. I admire it every day in between, for it is the moon at any point, and the moon is beautiful. 

I think of all the selves I have carried. The careful one, the nervous one, the quiet one, the giving one, the taking one, the one who wanted and wanted, and the one who was content. 

Perhaps there isn’t a version of me that is sad, that is loving, that is unsure, that is regretful. Perhaps there are no versions of me at all. Nature shows how to shift, that we are not defined by our pleasures and pains, our labels and experiences. Living is to move through a myriad of expressions of oneself, just as do the clouds, sea, moon, and songbird. And if this is true, then perhaps the same mercy belongs to everyone, because no single moment, no rumor, no mood wide enough to contain a whole person, can represent the whole of you or me.  

Cover photo credit: Toby Gordon