Poppies at Dawn with Love

Kicking Up Beauty I

This post kicks off a series called “Kicking Up Beauty,” inspired by two exchanges, the first between us two authors here and the second I’ll call “the gifts of the Davids.” The sealing of a friendship between authors David E. Perry and David Knowles is a delight. When the latter David wrote to the former, “Will you be my friend?” evoking, “The long-forgotten phrasing, the child-like openness to rebuff and rebuke [that] stopped me dead in my tracks,” he added, “I’ve got a White-clawed Crayfish claw that I found in the Eden and some of my uncle's magic hooks with curvy shanks wrapped in the original grease-paper. Swop with you for something?” Susie and I both swooned over the exchange that followed. So months later, when we decided to collab around the phrase “kicking up beauty” (one of us said it to the other about a post), a gift exchange seemed perfect.

As I said last week, you’ll find on the Rolling Desk a month of pieces illuminating our wildness—all we creatures who share this earth—and our connectedness. Yes, these are always themes of this desk. But/And right now, I’m game to put both in stark relief against the backdrop of forces hoping to tame and to divide. A friend wrote in a text exchange the other day, “We are all just letting them do this to us.” We must not. We must buck against tethers around any of our necks. We must know we are a force, connected even across distant continents.

The former David wrote in his response post of the latter’s talent for enchantment. And so, with a nod to enchanted friendships shared among us fragile humans and beyond, here’s today’s exchange.

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Poppies at Dawn with Love

To Susie from Holly 1

For our first exchange, dear friend, dear lover of light and mist, I’d like to offer you a tree. It’s in my cousin’s front yard.

“Oh!” my cousin, a chef and gardener whose skill and aesthetics in garden and on table—wild and abundant and colorful—make me swoon, calls in a voice gushing with laughter, “Come look at this Disney princess!”

Drawn out onto the rainbow mat on the porch, into glistening afternoon rays, heat pinkening my cheeks and chest, I gasp. “You’re right. She is a princess.”

Susie, this quince tree, is glorious and full, and she knows it. She’s grace and splendor. Among the first of her fellow trees charmed to bloom by the return of spring, she’s unfurled her blossom gown.

Won’t you imagine, dear Susie, sharing a glass of iced tea on the porch bench? We’ll take in her subtle perfume and wonder, What part of her knows how her limbs will, in another season, bow, heavy with fruit, one or two propped up on a bucket?

Quince blossoms by HOLLY STARLEY

To Holly from Susie 1

Holly, my lovely friend, nomadic seeker of kindnesses and beauty, I can well imagine such a heavenly scent, taste the iced tea while watching the breeze separate petals from flowers as they land at our feet. I can even imagine our conversation as we sit in such divinity.

My quest to find you the perfect gift in return took me on a walk along the lanes that zig-zag the hill, and I have to tell you, I was kicking up beauty with almost every step! There are wild flowers in nebulous clumps of ecstatic blue Forget-me-not and pink Herb Robert and fluffy white Pignut flowers and buttercups and Dandelion seeds—I blew wishes your way—lining every lane and hedgerow. And, hidden between fluorescent new leaves are birds, arriving from distant lands who, miraculously, still have the energy to sing! The song of the nightingale is so loud and so sweet I couldn’t help but idle away many countless, beautiful minutes just listening to the symphony. Oh and did I mention lichen of the brightest, palest luminous green shimmering through the blackthorn? 

But, though all these are worthy, my first humble gift to you, tiny by comparison to the Disney princess dancing on your cousins lawn, neither, I doubt, is it as sweetly scented, nevertheless is exquisitely made from the finest gossamer thread by the daintiest of creatures and I do believe touched in places by real gold and silver filigree. I believe there also to be just the tiniest touch of magic painted onto that silken lisle too…

A gossamer web by SUSIE MAWHINNEY

To Susie from Holly 2

Oh! Susie, What gauzy wonder. Surely this entire field where the dainty creature weaves and watches is sprinkled with magic.

I knew what I wanted for your second gift. The spot where I’d find it is a favorite of my friend Coco the dog. So I waited for a day she was visiting and told her we’d need to head out early. She cocked her head and lapped water, her way of saying, “I was born on a green light, sister.”

Then I got to humaning—just a couple things to check off the list. I’d gotten lost in this or that when a nose at my back reminded me of what I was after. “Yes, yes,” I agreed and gathered hiking shoes and fanny pack, Coco leap-twisting and prancing and nosing my lap, slowing our departure with untamable delight.

Soon, we’d arrived. Our destination, a 181-acre arboretum with 117 tree species from around the world and a small lake where grebe and mallards float. We took our path, lined with gushes of palm frond and gasps of wild irises and whispers of trunks cloaked in moss.

I worried we’d arrived a bit late. Coco, unconcerned, frolicked ahead and then paused for me to catch up or darted off, swallowed by forest till I chirped a low whistle and watched a black streamer emerge from green and morph into her.

“Did we miss it, girl?” I asked, surprised to still hear distant traffic.

She gazed at me, head cocked. Then spotting a squirrel, she tore off.

We crossed the first bridge and veered up toward the lake. Then suddenly, Yes!

The two of us held still—woman and dog entranced, in silent prayer—and let the gift I’d come for wash over us.

And so, dear Susie, I present to you this sound bath.  

To Holly from Susie 2

A sound bath, how will I resist diving in for a daily soaking of notes! A more glorious and calming, precisely perfect gift on a A sound bath, how will I resist diving in for a daily soaking of notes! A more glorious and calming, precisely perfect gift on a cold and damp evening could hardly be imagined! Thank you for venturing deep into wooded places with Coco, for filling my dull evening with the sound of bright notes and light.

Coincidence travels the ethernet so quietly doesn’t it? Oh my, but it’s powerful nonetheless… 

I too knew exactly what I wanted to send as a second gift, you can guess perhaps? 

The very same! A sound bath drenched with the paradisiacal song of the Golden Oriole, the sweet notes of shy nightingales, crickets too singing their critchety songs from buttercup filled meadows, the valley river tinkling over metamorphic stone in the background…

So, I thought again, an idea bloomed… but a little waiting was needed; patience while they bloomed too, opened their frills to begin their swaying dance!

I waited and waited, I walked past the meadow daily but their tiny ra-ra skirts didn’t appear! How curious I thought when I see their cousins scattered brightly along the hedgrows and gardens everywhere else? I was becoming concerned, until eventually I ignored the signs saying ‘Défense de rentrer - Propriété Privée’  to peer a little more closely at the delay only to find my dream gift to you still sleeping cosily in their hairy buds.

But then, finally, many days later than expected the meadow began to waken, one by one the buds opened, their crinkly petals unfurled, morning sunshine caught on the finest of sheer fabrics ever a person could behold as the light shimmered in the dew. My gift, trembling in all its magnificence as only a field of poppies can be on a morning such as it was, to send you. 

So here dear Holly, I send you poppies at dawn, with love.

Poppies at dawn by SUSIE MAWHINNEY

Gift 3: Holly to Susie

Often these past weeks, I’ve found myself, say, watching a ram with a coat like streaming cotton candy saunter from juniper branches, say, stooping to take in violet stamens like ant feather dusters, say, sitting cross-legged on a paddle board atop a lake the color of a newborn’s eyes. This is perfect, I’ll think. Susie will love it.

Then I recall the beginning of COVID-19. We were all, it seems, experiencing a confusion of isolation and connectedness. We were cut off. We were amid a global ordeal. 

The light at the spot where I first decided to wait out the pandemic (ha!) solo on a patch of gold and lime and scarlet desert, just me and Ruby the van, tugs at my mind. On that land, solitude beckoned coyly and grinned like an imp when I followed, twirling and leaping and opening her throat to spill moonlight at my feet. It’s hard to imagine I once mistook her for isolation. 

I treasured that light like a secret. But/And I wanted to share it.

Do you think, dear friend, we find ourselves in a similar time? As those who mainline what they understand as power (to rule over) reel in a lusty, furious bender, as Earth bellows an ever-heating roar, are we all feeling lost and alone amid a shared renting, a shared shift?

What I mean is it feels full circle to close out my portion of our “Kicking Up Beauty” with the light from that patch of desert, where I wandered in the gloaming, drank coffee with birdsong at dawn, where howls and who-who-who-whoooos and the buzzing of tiny wings wound through my dreams.

What I mean is it seems time to honor our connectedness across an ocean. It seems the moment to find wholeness within ourselves and also to reach out, reach out, reach out and take in all we share.

What I mean is may we all ferret out beauty and kick it up at every opportunity. 

What I mean is thank you.

Ruby the van draped in dawn by HOLLY STARLEY

Gift 3: Holly to Susie

Your letter feels like one of those rare serendipitous moments in life that touch the very bones of me, so intensely I wonder if there is magic afoot. One of those moments, I am often too timid to speak of for fear of being overwhelmed by such an admission…

This past week I have travelled away from my hill to a distant city in Portugal. I have walked in a country that was not my own, I have kicked up beauty on a beach stretching its white sands scattered with rounded boulders into infinity, I have walked with my feet in that same pale sand while waves crashed in from the Atlantic Ocean, watched tiny fish in gigantic shoals swim between my toes. I dawdled in colourful streets filled with music and bunting and sun browned children free from the confines of school with dusty toes in flipflops and sunhats flopping over their smiles and countless gulls taking their last flight with wings glinting on dying sunbeams as the sun slunk behind one of the oldest cities in the Europe. I traced it’s inky horizon made dramatic by ancient and baroque architecture while old fishing boats chugged up the vast estuary of the River Douro and I sighed the deepest sigh at the sheer latent exquisiteness.

I kicked up beauty in the city of Porto so far removed from the wild beauty and silence of my hill and I thought of you dear Holly and our letters wondering which of all those delights might please you most. But you know, and here is the magic part, the part that after reading your letter I know you will love and understand more than any other, each evening as I climbed the stairs to the humble place I would lay my head, as the music that will forever remind me of three beautiful days spent in a place that was mine to discover but not to keep echoed, melancholy in the distance, the thought that came to me more clearly than any beauty of the gift of a holiday, was the longing for my tiny patch of borrowed woodland at home. My heart-land. 

Long forgotten woodland that I uncovered, retrieved from abandonment and then re-covered with love and care and days and days of hard physical work during the first days of COVID-19 because while the rest of the world retreated into their fear of contagion, forced by propaganda or otherwise, I smiled and sang and felt an overwhelming freedom and with that freedom began a great affinity, a binding connection to the trees and the earth and the moss and lichen that I felt not only a desire in my heart but a burning need to share. 

And, then, as if each forgotten tree were thanking me for remembering their presence, for remembering that they too were alive and needed to be loved, to share their songs, they flourished and grew stronger. The elders took care of the saplings, where light at last filtered through branches so long suffocated by ivy, the woodland floor already fertile from so many years of neglect, became a wild explosion of flora and butterflies and bees. The woodland was breathing again and I shared every astonishing moment of magical beauty it gave me with a world in hiding. 

So I send my thanks back, through the kindred connection of two souls, from a woodland on a hill in France, across that same vast blue ocean where my feet were bathed in salty waves to yours in your patch of gold and lime and scarlet desert because I believe as distant as we are, we walk the same path. We hear the howl of this earth and we will not let it cry in vain.

A woodland on a hill in France by SUSIE MAWHINNEY

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Thank you for being here. Connecting with you here is a salve. Your likes and shares and restacks (we love it when you hit that little recycle button!) make us giddy. Our exchange of energy through you reading is my rising thermal. We’re thrilled to share poppies and quince trees and gossamer threads and to listen to sound baths and the howl of the earth with you!

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For the comments, What fun/interesting/deep/long-lasting connections have you made with people in far-flung places? When’s the last time you’ve asked someone or been asked, “Will you be my friend?” Will you be our friend?

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Romp through the seasons on a hill in South West France with Susie Mawhinney

Go on the road in a pearl-colored van called Vivian van Gogh with Holly Starley