The Sidebar: The Lambs, The Postcard, Those Japanese Pancakes

+ Joni and Brandi, Four Basils and That Thin Place

1.  The lambs, June evening.

There are people swarming all over this Island, clogging roads and lining up for lattes. But are they walking the Land Bank trail around Flat Point Farm? Have they followed the narrow path as it winds under a cool canopy of leafy oaks, hugs the heroically tangled hedges of bittersweet and honeysuckle, and wanders down to the shore of Tisbury Great Pond, where the pair of swans and the mother goose with her goslings paddle in the silvery seven-o-clock light on a June evening? Do they know the wild roses and the daisies are blooming? That the thick carpet of clover on the path looks like a dusting of snow? That the clearing where the old summer shack used to be is petaled purple with fallen rhododendron blooms and ringed by a sunny circle of forgotten yellow daylilies? That the blueberry blossoms are gone, the pollinators have come, and the first green berries with their little chapeaus that look like Jughead’s crown are forming on the branches?   

Do they know that the mama sheep in the far field are still nursing their baby lambs? And that I wait patiently by the fence for this lamb to come to me, as it does, a blessing disguised by pink ears and a curious nose?

And do they know that I take the long way back and that there is a thin place – a place where a spirit hovers and the cotton-curtain breeze ceases to blow and the shirt-sleeve temperature drops a degree – and that I am forced to stop and listen to nothing and see everything?

No. How could they? They are not here. They have not come to the Island to be transported, to disrobe of false intentions and simply stand bravely and naked in the face of beauty.