40

Suddenly - unexpectedly - the last of the month's moonlight.

And suddenly, dawn.

One imagines the interior of the echo of church bells.

One allows oneself to be written anew, again.

Whatever happens, direct all your thinking towards the one God, she says.

We walk past the old feeder ponds as the sun rises.

Fingers of red light extend from the east and the water glows faintly where the wind veers across it.

I tell her I am losing faith in the mail, which is to say I am losing faith that anything will arrive that will save me.

She takes my hand in her gnarled own.

I am silent now but for tears.

The fishermen we pass look away.

"You have chosen to become a traveler on the road that leads only to Peace," she says.

When I try to swallow my tears she tightens her grip on me, as if to say it is time to allow for crying.

The path is not easy, she says quietly.

Nor is it brief.

We turn slowly east, stopping to watch bass plash the shallows.

A heron steps gracefully through the water as if writing itself in the air.

You must give consent to the interior pilgrimage to where death does not exist and all beings in their wholeness are present.

She points to a birch tree leaning far out over the water, its pale reflection just visible on the rippling surface.

That tree was created so you would remember your sacred vow, she says, and for the rest of the morning is silent, still.