Treasure Hunter

I took two plastic shopping bags with me on my walk this morning, just in case. I’d been carrying rocks home all week for edging a flowerbed … and carrying them by hand. Bags might be more “handy.”

Ever alert to treasures—in the child’s sense of the word—I noticed ferns, tree bark, caterpillars, a turtle and a hawk, clouds, flowers, large and small stones, and … a trash bag. New. It wasn’t there yesterday. That surprise started an internal dialogue:

– Pick it up.
– What for? I already have trash bags with me.
– It’s serendipity. Pick it up. You’ll find out later why.
– Oh, please. That’s silly … just magical thinking.
– Yes, exactly. Pick it up.
– But WHY?!
– You’ll SEE why.

I picked it up.

Picking up on serendipities is my nature—the WHY was now self-evident, like a Declaration of Independence truth. [By the way, the bag is from Cabela’s, the outdoors outfitter. Some other person is currently enjoying these woods. Good to know.]

I returned home with three shopping bags unfilled. But I did not return empty-handed, meaning empty-hearted:

HEARTENED

Love
is the treasure,
the storehouse,
the key.
All “open secrets”
it opens to me.

The fruits of my treasure-hunting expedition are that poem and another. The second is about magical coincidences and the relativity of reality:

DAY DREAMS

Why should magic by day—
     coincidences,
          serendipities,
               delusions—
differ from magic by night?

Are they not both
     sleights-of-mind?
          Illusions?

Epilogue. My partner just came home from a hard and hot day’s work.After supper, he relaxed in a chair and asked me to tell him a story, just a child might at bedtime. I related all the adventures of my treasure hunt, including visits with neighbors. I take it as a compliment that he drifted off to sleep.

I spared you many of the treasure-hunt episodes in today’s writing and will fill you in later. Or not … depending on serendipities and further wonders. May you have many. ~ ♥Jo

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