Spring Journal: The Vision of Mayflies

“When this body-medium goes, we will see directly the light that lives in the chest.
The qualities of water show how we move inside grace.”
-Rumi

Light returns to the valley. Purple crocus flames pierce the winter-brown grass, their petals spread wide to catch the strengthening sun. Yellow buttercups nod by the stream where ice recently ruled, while snowdrop bells bow their white heads in the morning breeze. Spring rises from earth’s long sleep.

Each dawn brings new sparks of life. Morning light catches in drops of dew, each one holding the sky. The same light that traveled ninety-three million miles of space now splits into rainbow fragments on grass blades, fills the hollow bones of waking birds, and warms the fur of deer emerging from woodland shadows.

This energy of sunlight flows through all living things. It rises as green fire in growing plants, transforms into sweet fruit hanging heavy on branches, passes into wing-beat and birdsong, becomes a midnight feast for a hungry possum, and turns into a dawn hunt in a fox’s keen eyes. Far below ocean waves, it gathers in beds of swaying seaweed, powers the pulse of drifting shrimp, and blazes in the silver scales of fish. It lifts corn from black soil toward the blue sky, becomes grain that feeds livestock, and eventually fills the sandwich you eat for lunch.

Rain soaks the rich soil. A seed stirs in darkness, gathering water and minerals into itself, yearning for light. It becomes a green shoot, then a stem, and finally, a flower spreading its petals to the sky. When drought comes, the flower returns to the soil. Its stored light feeds the patient work of earthworms, rises in the robin’s morning song, and transforms into eggs as blue as an April sky. Nothing is lost. Nothing is separate. Nothing is fixed. All is becoming.

Look closely.

Your breath, your thoughts, your morning stretch—they all began as starlight. You are not apart from this light; you are its latest expression. Cloud water flows in your veins. The soil’s minerals build your bones. Star-fire powers each heartbeat. Your mind holds only borrowed treasures: experiences, childhood songs, friends’ laughter, the wisdom of forgotten teachers, and stories carried on the wind.

By the stream bank, the first hatch of blue mayflies rises from the water into the cool spring air. Their wings catch sunlight as they spin through their single day of dancing before death. To them, passing clouds may seem like the permanent loss of blue skies.

Our short years share their distorted vision— we see only separate objects, plants, animals, and people where an endless ocean moves. If we could peer through the eyes of the centuries, what now appears solid would flow—dynamic, unified, and as inseparable as the wide sea. We would see ourselves as we truly are: boundless, composite, impermanent, and as impossibly beautiful as waves curling in the morning sunlight.

The wind shifts. The tide shapes us. For a moment, we rise—white-maned, shimmering, and roaring at the shore’s edge, proud in our fleeting form. Yet always water. Water before rising. Water while standing. Water after falling. Water becoming the next wave. Nothing separate. Nothing fixed. No beginning. No end. No birth. No death. One ocean dancing in endless forms.