The waters, the leaves

I don't know where spring went. I think it slipped in and away between the last snows and the torrents of rain that have made the rivers swell around here. Walks up the hill draw our eye downward to our feet, our fingers lift the lush leaves of the plants, and we find flurries of tiny blooms that promise an assortment of berries, come the season. A month ago, as I was in Nebraska with my ailing Dad, BiL told me of a sighting of a wolf and a golden eagle on the same afternoon.
I might have known the signs, as I might have known the signs of my Dad's passing, but was I in denial, that I did not see? The lessened eating, the determination on his part that he would "never get out of here," the seeing of things he could not explain.... I thought it was all from the infection, not pre-death.
He passed, in the earliest hours of the morning following his birthday party. (He'd told my sister that it wasn't much of a party.)
From then on life has blurred, I often lose track of what day it is, I hurry along on one day, collapse inward the next.
Walks on the hills have helped me tremendously, as have a couple journeys on water in my kayak. BiL is steadfast in standing by me, whatever my demeanor at the moment.
The eagle and wolf were doing the work of cleaning up a mule deer carcass, the doe apparently having fallen of old age. I was up there today, admiring the bones, the darkened flesh, the empty eye sockets. It is graceful. It is in balance with earth, as I seek to be. A storm is trying to birth from the west but I think it is drawing north now.
A couple days this week a small hawk came and sat on our front railing. Both times I was the only one to see it. From the size, I think it to be a sharp shinned hawk. To see it up close is stunning.
If I did not believe in the power of our web of existence, I would think I was going crazy right now. Instead I mark the unique and rare as welcome companions to this time of transition.