No Other Mode Will Do

At 2 a.m. the wind comes, gusty and warm, reminiscent of confusing weeks in Florida. One walks the dog in no hurry, unable to stitch thoughts to order, so giving attention instead to the familiar (the ancient) melody of MacLean's The Gael. Dense clouds pass overhead obscuring the moon, yet a faint luminosity - one that would have pleased Coleridge - attends.

The neighbors car lights are one and I duck in quickly to turn them off, one kind of angel but not another. Is it possible the backyard rose bush cannot solve every problem? One encounters for the first time the metaphor of self as flute in which the breath of God makes music and it resonates, it hums, it does.

C wakes early and finds me in the back room writing and visits a moment before intuiting the fructive welter and so gathers her knitting, a blue and violet shawl that always settles some internal conflict in me. Lilac bushes reach the roof and one watches them drift this way and that in the slow tides of dawn. A sudden spate of rain, against which you duck but continue forward, as if sure in the knowledge that no other mode will do.

The altar trails behind me and I only remember it near the brook, listening to warblers whose interior clocks are clearly busted. Emily Dickinson misunderstood is not the end of the world but it doesn't help either. We baked bread and dusted it after with Parmesan cheese and crushed garlic in oil, eating it warm with pickles and olives, talking about how much fun it was to read mysteries together all those many years ago.

How sensitive I am to any perception of criticism! Relationship now beckons and I ascend its spiral stem accordingly, gripping the green leaves for ballast, bent only on the pale blue blossom overhead. And meanwhile, the man without shoes enters a pawn shop and falls weeping when he discovers his great-grandfather's pocket watch still ticking in a dusty display case (beside a vintage "no trespassing" sign and his grandmother's handwritten recipe cards).

Peace be with you who are ready now to ask for peace! Folds of blanket set aside in order to assemble the perennial question and then enter the answer with all one's body humming. Wind and rain, dog and no dog, and an interior perception of cataclysm I am at last ready to face.

One composes prayerfully, mantis-like, a bluet. One perceives a separate will - the combustible plasticine self - and discards it in the maple trees, arranging happily the notes of Creation.