It never ceases to amaze me how, when you go into a fairy tale, you enter a magical field of attraction. As I write the words, ‘field of attraction’, a butterfly has just landed on the arm of the porch chair. Beyond, our neighbor’s cat crouches in the grass, eyes trained on the insect. I don’t generally get visited by butterflies, and I can’t help but think that the butterfly is just one more affirmation of something that is getting harder and harder not to believe: that inner thoughts and outer happenings are not strangers to one another, and we all live intimately close to one another in a unified field of life.
Today seems to be unusually full of magic. It’s as if the wave of summer is cresting today. From the moment I woke, I’ve been singing a song. At first, I didn’t notice it. I just hummed this old familiar melody that was with me in the atmosphere. A song I used to sing in childhood. When I started thinking about it, I remembered phrases, like, “Tell the moon to wait, and the stars to linger…wrap the world round your summer finger…” What a beautiful song. I hadn’t sung it for forty years. What was it? Why today?
(The butterfly’s back).
As I drove to physio this morning, I was still singing the melody, and feeling happy—happier than I’ve felt in a long while. For no particular reason. It was a sunny, cheerful morning. I was wearing a flower print red sundress and a pair of “Gentle Soul” sandals I bought in the spring. Driving along, other songs poured in. I’ve been composing songs lately. I sang a few of those. And then I remembered songs I haven’t sung for a while. Ballads, mostly, Celtic voices from the past, often haunting and yearning.
The old ballads washed over the first song, and it vanished the way dreams do. I strained to hear it again. I felt as if the shine would go off the day if I didn’t remember it. I asked for that sweet melody to come to me again, please! Eventually it did return, tripping back like a delicate breeze. When I got home, I typed a line of the lyric into Google and found the song. The Summer Knows.
I clicked on a youtube site to hear the whole song performed by a singer whose name I didn’t recognize: Jackie Evancho. Her voice was mature, strong and wonderfully rich. I touched the screen and her image appeared. The very image of my character, Abeille! Singing the song that floated to me this morning, all the way back from childhood.
I felt the sharp edge of a poignant thought. My own character is singing to me, and she’s singing to me of my own self.
The summer smiles, the summer knows, and unashamed, she sheds her clothes.
The summer smoothes the restless sky,
And lovingly she warms the sand on which you lie.
The summer knows, the summer’s wise, she sees the doubts within your eyes,
And so she takes her summertime, tells the moon to wait and the sun to linger,
Twist the world around her summer finger.
Lets you see the wonder of it all,
And if you learned your lesson well,
There’s little more for her to tell,
One last caress, it’s time to dress for fall.