Beyond Saints and Mystics

Dawn now blooming in a commonplace haze. Your side of the pines, luminous – my side, damp from overnight rains. Gathering to head east and wondering what, if anything, will be left behind.

Horses I will never know. Fox feet. Animals migrating. My walk has been chosen.

Sometimes my shadow startles me! Like, what are you doing here?

Along side the trail behind Rush Creek, cornfields become a new forest. Blushing tassels now rise higher than my shoulder. Red-winged blackbirds trill and trifle but also, wrens and sparrows dart about as if playing hide-n-seek with the world.

My wall of windows open east and I am never not facing that way. That means different things at different times but always, love. When Fran was killed, the family clung to her favorite phrase and made it a mantra. Her eyes would become like radiant jewels in mid-morning sun when she used to exclaim, “I just love, love!” I miss her.

Love has never changed but my understanding of it blooms in many different colors. As of late, it has returned to the color of my earliest childhood memories – before I knew about bodies and sex and marriage and happily-ever-after – before evil or sorrow or slavery or apartheid – before God and church and the awareness of saints and mystics.

Love as the color of light
bouncing off the lake.

Love as the deep green of August pines
offering incense unto the Kingdom.

Love as shadows in the deeper woods
where one can be both hidden and seen.

Love as hues of dirt on the gravel road –
dark with dampness after rain,

and light as beach sand
after rainless July weeks.

I have a feeling I will outlive you all and spend my last embodied days alone on a back road, shuffling along, talking as I go, to the bees or the Monarchs or the little rabbits hiding in the brush. The color of home is the color of love.

And I just love, love.