Common Joy

A Surprise Puppy

Meet Daisy

This writing is different from what I normally write, but this Christmas I was surprised by a puppy. The writing stopped. This is my attempt to return, so it’s a bit different than usual and much shorter.

I hope you enjoy and thanks for reading.

Daisy and I walk past common ninebark, common evening primrose and rocks splotched with common lichens. Next, the common eyelash fungi absorbing fallen trees. The common European amber snail sliming its way up a leaf. The larva of a common sawfly slinking up a sensitive fern and the blazing, sessile common Star-of-Bethlehem.

Common: the ordinary, normal, routine. Regular and quotidian. Often abundant, but perhaps not noticed. Not praiseworthy.

Yet, what is common about a sawfly with a Latin binomial sweet as birdsong, Ten·thrë·DIN·i·dee, whose ovipositor cuts through twig bark to lay eggs or the common ninebark shrub who alone feeds the ninebark pygmy moth larva tunneling through its leaves? We certainly praise the goldfinch who peels away the exfoliating bark to weave into nests.

Are 4 mm eyelash fungi caps lined with fringe common when they earn their living by breaking down the dead? Imagine a forest where every fallen tree remained, the woods a stacked and stagnant tangle. Does the name Molly Eye-winker alone not entice delight?

The common Star-of-Bethlehem lingers until noon before opening to shine bright white and seals up at dusk just as the common evening primrose opens to greet insomniacs and feed hawk moths in a bi-colored botanical changing of the guard. Common lichen, that rootless cocktail made from fungi and algae, soaks life from the air, desiccating and resuscitating through drought and rain. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History calls the common European amber snail an explosive breeder, a tingling paradox of slow and furious tucked under a translucent shell!

Daisy ignores my mumbled umbrage at the use of the word common, bounds off toward a quilt of common haircup moss. She stops. She drops. She rolls onto her back sliding and wiggling, on fire with uncommon joy.

Not the best video, but worth 12 seconds of your day….