Skin Signs
When we leave home on vacation in early June
all is ordinary, predictable, unremarkable.
Returning from Yellowstone in mid-June
when we gain the ridge overlooking the Cache Valley
a crescendo of unexplainable feelings thunders
along neuronal pathways shaking me like a sapling
in a storm, filling me with sudden knowing.
This is where our children are going to live, I say,
and much sooner than anyone thinks.
In awe, I repeat it again and again, attempting to grasp
this prophesy I don’t understand.
That evening in the Eastern Sierra we speak
with our daughter on the phone.
She tells us her husband has this very day
been offered a position in the Cache Valley.
They haven’t made a decision yet.
She doesn’t know what they will do,
but deep inside I do.
I tell her of my experience that morning.
Her reply is a long pregnant silence
then an outpouring of relief at the confirmation:
Oh, Mom, that makes me feel so much better.
You know we don’t want to leave you and Dad,
but this rural setting offers our whole family so much.
Within six weeks they have sold their house
and van, we have helped them pack their belongings
into moving vans, and they have rolled away.
When I visit them a month later, I discover
the place where I had the epiphany the month before
is a mere half-block from where they now live.
In deep reverence, my consciousness kneels before
the instantaneous image of a vast intricate web
linking us together like beads in Gaia’s necklace.
The thread that binds us together is the singular
sinew of Spirit speaking through the Sacred Heart.
What is given to us is given through us.
Paintings by Gene Elsdon |
Primrose
In a deep spread of gravel
A single wild primrose
Thrusts upward through small stones.
Tall, delicate, its scalloped silken petals
Shine like sunlight distilled.
Its bold brushstrokes of yellow and green
Across the gray granite canvas
Brings gladness to the one who finds it.
Later she discovers a cord of heavy oak wood
Dumped onto the gravel bed,
Obliterating the wildflower.
She stacks the wood, piece by fresh-cut
Wood-scented piece
Startled by her unexpected sadness
At thoughts of the blossom broken.
She stacks and stacks, uncovering
At last the single wild primrose
Still standing tall, delicate, its scalloped
Silken petals shining like sunlight distilled.
It sways there unbroken, unbruised,
Unspoiled, flawless, mythological, whole.
In a silence ringing with truth
She stands mesmerized by the miracle
That declares
Anything is possible.
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