The Greenhouse

the wrong thing giving way to the right –

Frost bites into the first blooms but this time I wince less against winter's “hey.” Who fumbles with my soul has impunity because permission was gifted long before this life. I clipped my fingernails in time with the dripping bathtub faucet; this and other ways in which a secret world continues to press into me.

I don't know what I'm doing. Gifts are sent on a silver thread but the sender begs me to cut the damn string. Am I the devil pulling heaven down into my throated prayer? First shoots break the spell and Lily of the Valley begin to show their bells. A nuthatch pirouettes in and out of the oak's corrugated spine. Where I am in May feigns the verge of spaciousness. And yet, the dream is all in passing.

Awake at 2 a.m., each turn or reach or pill or stretch fails to pacify the reminder that I am alive. Because of the greenhouse, I am stronger. Because of the greenhouse, I stay where I am. Today if I wrote you a story, the lighthouse would become the greenhouse.  

A cascade of blue notes at dawn opens a wayfarer's embrace. Theology is dead. Church hurts. And Scriptures bob and weave as if one had all day hear from the Lord. Yet, birds harmonize some sort of Absolute. I hear them and know that I am – alive, here, and somehow, almost waiting.