The Chickadees Came Along

Morning coffee, three a.m., moonlight slivering the room in ways that deepen my prayer. What is Jesus but the one idea that brings us to stillness, the whole fulcrum of self perfectly balanced. There is only this: this this.

Yet one does go about repeating themselves, being more like a parrot or a mockingbird than not. In my early twenties, not without notice but certainly unaware of the long-term consequences, my life assumed a certain posture of worship and adoration. We laugh making love because our hips hurt and because I say near the finish, "it's more fun to make sandwiches."

Things we assume because long ago someone we trust asserted them. Bronson Brook rolls through old forest, fed in part by a tiny feeder that tumbles through old sheep pastures down into the dingle. Maple syrup on snow, pickles, hot chocolate and brandy: we were outside a lot in those days and we fed ourselves simply.

In moonlight the horses - who are the heart of my daughters - remind me of the little boy who dreamed of horses despite knowing that the very fact of dreaming them meant they were impossible. In other words, who shall we trust? The reverence we feel beside bodies of water is simple recognition (they really are mirrors) and can - but needn't be - gussied up with theology.

A legacy of Greek mountain women pervades my living, especially as we age and begin to care for one another in an old way. One loses touch with what turned them to brandy and acid, and yet what one learned while drunk and tripping remains viable. Back then Linden Street in Fall River still had old trolley tracks running up its middle and my sense of what matters and what is possible and what is not is informed accordingly.

One works through their biases, one rearranges the various interior shelves. Around eleven snow begins and I wander up Main Street onto Plainfield Road pausing now and then in the pure susurration. Someone asks what my favorite Latin word is and Chrisoula answers quickly "fellatio" and everybody laughs, it was that kind of gathering.

Of course, it is possible to be happy without perceiving a deluge of sorrow about to come crashing, isn't it. I thought I'd figured it all out when I said don't build churches with doors that lock, but then the chickadees came along saying, "why bother with doors at all?"