The "pulmonary gap": when doing defines you (and nature pushes back)

Navigating the inner & outer clogs of seasonal life

There may be a tree growing in me such 
is their fertility. The air is 
thick with pine pollen a 
yellow film accumulating on 
all surfaces, in all orifices. 

With every intake of breath its 
newness needles my throat its 
roots tickle my lungs. And when 
I open my mouth to cough it seizes 
the opportunity to climb a little higher.

Perhaps it is my destiny to become mulch for its roots. 

Crabs of thought edge across the fissured rock of morning. Irritation of throat and lungs mingles with the image of a tree. Grey matter throws out words: pulmonary, and gap. It borrows a little from another tree, and sticks. Pulmonary gap.

Pulmonary Gap: not all pine seedlings make it

Something had to give, and it was me.

It took a while, and it was only when I could see no way around the wall that I stopped. Set everything aside, close my eyes, listen to the birds and, briefly, I slept.

Doing defines us, not being. Despite the lack of sleep, the congestion that clogs breath and thought alike I try to force it, to keep

doing.

When did this rhythm take hold? What is the imperative? Where exactly is the emergency?

And as soon as this tide turns, ebbs just a little—perhaps a false promise—it begins again. The inability to sit and simply be.

And so I cycle with futility, lacking either the energy to do anything properly, or the wholesale inability that makes bed rest the only choice. The engine is always running irrespective of how badly it needs an advisory, or essential rest.

Before this, I went to the wood with my macro lens to look better at the chickweed wintergreen. It probably wasn’t advisable: I noticed the fine film of yellow pine pollen coating my camera. I probably had one too.

Stem upright with surprise   five leaves 
an irregular whorl   broadening from the base
a white dot   a bulging bullet point at the end of a line

Open wide a porcelain bowl of light
seven petals   sharply pointed to prick the sky
seven stamens    yellow-tipped birthday candles

In number   white scattered across green 
it is as if the stars have fallen and 
now reach for their former home.

Even the spider’s silk is decorated with pine pollen

When I first encountered its delicate white flowers, I thought this tiny treasure perhaps a kin to wood anemone. Lysimachia europea is in fact a member of the primrose family. I much prefer ‘arctic starflower’ to our decidedly common name ‘chickweed wintergreen’.

When you are down low, you never know what you may find.

I love these serendipitous encounters, and alternate views of places we think we know.

And there, I think, I will pause. Thank you for your kind reaction and comments on last week’s letter—it was good to share Sketchbooks, salt air and stillness air with you. My voice is resting but will be back next time to add a voiceover.

Until next week,

If you enjoy what I share, a lovely way to say ‘thank you’ is to make a small donation here. To those of you who have, my heartfelt gratitude.

PostScript

This week I recommend reading:

Where does your heart rest?

It was such a joy to read

Jan Elisabeth

’s post, with its sense of an echo: she along her north-facing coastline, and a week or so later me along mine.

Behind a bank hunching its back to the ocean, a swathe of wood violets, gorse — abundant and golden — speckled with sea campion, white stars against green grasses, blackthorn — fierce and exquisite — people the heath, guard the stony paths, and the sea — turquoise and peridot, scintillates to the sun’s pulse and the moon’s pull, breaks in foam and spume — liquid towers white against ochre granite. April, the sky a wash of blues — hot cyan to linen smoke, the bay in the distance a dust-blue shadow.

Where does your heart rest?

Attuned to beauty

A truly moving piece about painter Jean Cooke by

Deborah Vass

. If we only complain that we do not have enough time, then we are perhaps fortunate.

But it was what I saw next, just as I was about to leave, that really gave me a thrill. Entitled, “The Garden”, this was not a tamed, formal space, but a peek over a rickety panelled fence into an unruly garden, a magnolia pushing its way through the thicket. It is early spring, and the lime flushed buds are about to burst against the dun branches of winter. I loved the rhythm of the sweeping tangle and the strokes of white that sparked upwards, like fireworks, against the dark. I was enchanted. I wanted to clamber over that fence and see what lay sleeping. Perhaps a robin might lead the way?

My thoughts were shaken by the caption at its side…

Attuned to beauty

Copyright © Michela Griffith 2025 except where otherwise credited