The Ledge of Conclusion

You insist on this form and not another. At 2 a.m., I was wide awake and chewing aspirin and wondering what the priests who still perform exorcisms dream about. He wrote that he'd follow me into hell if such a trip were possible. At 5 a.m., snow falling, the train whistle brought such clarity you'd think Jesus had invested in a sledgehammer.

Do you know how I am? It's not this but something else. The beloved apostle is stranded on a foreign shore indeed! She is the one who says it's not necessary to stay awake all night on your knees.

Oh God please raise to the light of understanding all your exiled children! Grace is as grace does is what we never quite want to hear. I believe in lilies, cultivating milkweed for monarch butterflies, sourdough starter and also Emily Dickinson's letters after maybe 1865. Watch your laces she said with a smile that made me forget about time for almost forever.

Folded blankets, a knitted cap and some familiar songs from the 1970's. I write and write and write and at last arrive at where one writes, one does. I is another is not quite it either. Can you say this sentence rises in the mind, set apart from all the many others?

The vast mantle of the meadows - decked in snow, spackled with deer prints - invites one back from the ledge of conclusion. All she has to do is ask. Without you I couldn't enjoy the deep heavenly joys. Beloved of all my brilliant sisters would you walk with me now across the road into the forest?