Two Snows

It is a few minutes after 10 p.m. and my imaginings began the moment the support group chat ended.

I thought I heard a bird calling from a tree out along the treeline. (There is no treeline and it is the night which is how I knew these were my imaginings.) 

The sound of the bird drew me to a sense of joy and wonder. My grandfather, on my mother's side, could call up many different kinds of birds. He was a true outdoorsman having lived as a farmer for many years. He had a natural gift for mimicking and a love for storytelling. The sound of the bird out along the treeline was a form of a memory. I stood in the yard many an evening as he responded to a variety of birdcalls. It was magical. He would stop and wait for their response and cup his hands around his mouth or form his lips to make a different call.

The mockingbirds and the whippoorwills were the first to show up along the treeline. I don't remember any of them coming much closer. If I could be so bold as to consider the mind of a bird, I would say they were puzzled by their response to a call with no imaginable source. It seemed to come from that tall figure standing a short distance from the woods. But what could that mean and how crazy would they have to be to flit over on what could be a suicide mission. I am taking extreme liberties in imagining their thoughts. But it takes an imagination to watch your Papa whistle up birds and have them come to the treeline in response. My grandfather would tire of calling them and move to go to the house. If I was lucky he would take the time to recount a short story of other times he experienced with the birds. 

That set of memories evokes the distinct smell of pine trees, pine straw lying deep on the forest floor and a light wind blowing through causing the trees to sway a slow dance back and forth in rhythm with the wind. A sandy, narrow road ran from the main road to their house and continued further down splitting three different ways to access their old house and two tobacco barns. It continued on around the side of a large field used for tobacco, vegetables and, on schedule, to lay fallow for a year. Wow, "to lay fallow" what a great analogy for resting with purpose.    

The large field had long rows but a trick of perception, created by a slight rise midway in the rows, gave the illusion of shorter rows. For some reason, the illusion tricked me over and over again as I was growing up. I would help to sucker tobacco and get happy that the row was ending and another step forward would reveal that darn row running out ahead of me for quite a long ways to the bordering treeline. Why I was tricked yet again by that illusion is a mystery to me. 

I titled this post "Two Snows". I am going to leave the title as it is because I was going to write about two snows. It is incongruent but I can't imagine anyone cares.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

A Love That Will Not Let Me Go

I am standing in a thick, black darkness. I am surrounded on all sides by this darkness. I begin to feel as if the darkness has substance. I move my hands to touch it. I imagine it feels like a rich velvet material. I sense I am facing towards something but the depth of the black darkness numbs my senses.  I begin to know the darkness is the dread in my heart. I am, for the moment, willfully blind to the what lies ahead of me. I sense a vast, unyielding space and I wish to back off from it, turn and run. I wish for the light and the innocence of a time I believe I remember yet the memory does not penetrate the darkness.
 A wind begins to gently blow tousling my hair as it swirls the darkness around me. A low, whistling of wind blowing over and under something comes to me on the flow of the wind. The darkness swirls yet does not part. The wind blows yet cannot change the depth or texture of the darkness surrounding me. There are no tiny openings for light. No reference points. The absence of a frame of reference alarms me. Part of me begins to believe I am descending into a dark madness. The whistling of the wind subsides. Silence! I strain to catch the sound of the wind. The remoteness envelopes me. As the wind blows harder and harder the darkness begins to lift. I strain to see yet wish not to see. Slowly the swirling darkness lifts up and over me. I am standing on the edge of an unbelievably beautiful chasm. Birds flit and fly through the clear, blue of the sky. The scent of flowers pouring out of every gap in the stones of the side of the chasm fill the air with a sweet aroma. The aroma is delicate. It whispers over and over of love and yet more love. A golden glow permeates every atom of the air, the flowers, the stones. I cannot tell the glow apart from the stone or the flower or the air or the birds. The air plays a melody apart from the wind, apart from everything I can see with my eyes. The air fills with a melody that permeates the golden light that permeates all that I can see. The wind, air, melody, golden light and magnificent aroma blend, twirling and twirling together forming a strand of all that I see and experience. The strand grows longer and fills with the essence of the lovely chasm. The wind drapes the strand of all that I have seen around my neck and seems to kiss me on the cheek. Everything around me fades into a mist into a dream. I wake up. Oh,  love that will not let me go! I call Your name and You answer. I cry out and You hear. I am forever changed. I am forever Yours. Forgive my fear!