grace

"--o remember in your narrowing dark hours that more things move than blood in the heart."

Louise Bogan

The week was muddy and fraught with feelings I couldn't put words to, even as I wanted desperately to say something true and then to have the sheer weight of that truth anchor me to the ground. I began to slip through my own fingers, beyond Squirrel's grasp even, to the place where language has no power for redemption. And then unaccountably I thought of the freckles on my mother's arm and her birthmark. I realized without forming words: I love my mother and knew it was true and nourishing as soup. And then, because they go together, I thought of my father and the way he taps his foot under the dinner table and again I thought my father is a good man and this thought was subject to gravity as all real things are.

The screaming started, though, and metal rose up from the ground and the rain and air rusted the landscape and I worried it was too late for any words that I might find. But he set a cup of tea, settled in a saucer, in front of me and when his fingers touched the back of my hand, I nodded my head because I knew it was more true than nerve endings or rain. The sun came up in the morning and Squirrel and I walked for many miles along the river because our legs are strong enough to take us and outloud she said to me we should be thankful for this gift of motion, so we were and our gratitude was as true as the dirt under our feet and my love for her seemed more lasting than the stones.

And then Grace called last night and I could hear her shrugging across the way, seeming to say with her shoulders this is a mystery I can live with, how I came to love him when I didn't think I would love anyone this way. For awhile she spoke of being 18 and the poems we used to say each to other, the way we cut our hair and scampered through the woods at night, of the decisions and the boys and the cliffs we climbed over the sea. What lovely horrible times those were -- how good to look back and then decide to open your arms to whatever comes next she said. I am so happy for you I said because the words were true and I could not hold them back.