The End of Weddings

The weather ring around the moon widens, becoming almost imperceptible. Gassho brother, gassho sister. Clouds float low along the river murmuring before dawn. How cold my feet are! God doesn't know the word "choose," nor that to which it points. I'm alone again, thanking Christ again. I'm carrying hay to the horses again, lingering to ask them questions about my daughters, all daughters, and the world I've helped pit against them. Again. There is no silence like when you let the Holy Spirit teach you how to hear. Walking slowly back to the house, back to the marriage, there is nothing else. The world below the world of woe is . . . what exactly? Towering hemlocks, ornamental birch trees. Fox tracks in frosty grass before the breaking-down chicken shed. Sharing the way to learn that sharing the way is the way is the way. Back to what cannot be left because it is the cosmos? Welcome to the end of weddings! The heart beyond begging, and nothing left to want.