how acutely i feel.....
when i was very small, i would stand on my little bed at night for hours & hours - gazing out my bedroom window at the world as it was - i could see our street, davis avenue in gering, i could see our neighbors house, and the side yard between. our neighbor's had a daughter named brenda, and i would think about brenda and what it as like in her head.
i would worry about brenda.
i would gaze out at the sky and think about all the hurt & pain in the world. lonely children, hurt & lost animals, the long forgotten causes & missions of long, forgotten people. i would pray back then, for all that hurt to go away; to be replaced by sunlight, hope & love.
we moved to north platte and i had a beautiful pink & purple bedroom, a french provencal canopy bed over which another window peered out into the world. i would kneel on my very girly pink bed, and pressing my elbows into the glass, again feel - NOT merely imagine, but FEEL the world's hurt. animal & human alike. they were all the same - same despair, same loneliness and pain.
by this time, i stopped praying, and just
hoped. hard.
friendships were felt easily too. every nuance, every slight, every joy - every moment that was true & perfect like we were gods, happening to land here on earth for
some brief lifetime.
some moments shone with a timeless brilliance, as if placed under a bell-jar.
sitting on slames brothers bunk-bed, singing along to yellow brick road, eating brownies laced with weed.
all of our little gang, playing down on the river with the sun shining hot, and the taste of june on your tongue.
that night across from the party, laying amongst garden & grass: discovering sex, discovering him & a part of myself.
release under stars and the smell of grass mingled with the smell of us ...
i was home.
i think every moment is like that. standing apart from the rest, each is perfect in it's chaos and possibility.
time, of course, sometimes was just time. rolling along with it's own agenda, careening & dashing around the barriers & walls people put up to shield themselves from the truth.
pure, golden moments though raged on always.....
when i was 8 months pregnant, we ran over a rattlesnake on the way to golden from boulder - i cried for 2 hours about that snake.
i felt that snake.
touching daisy's bristly little red hair as it stood up on her month old head, i could feel every hurt, every pulse of life & hope and it terrified me.
everyday news was approached with caution, and fortitude as sometimes the details were too grim, the reality to harsh to bare ..... or so i thought.
heartbreak & unhappiness, pain & loneliness - as i age, they seem to be countered with a measure of wisdom, hope, trust & well, love.
.... biting into an apple = you anticipate the taste, the feel of the skin upon your lips and your mouth might salivate a bit, yet you hesitate becuase the cold against your teeth will be shocking & hurt. your eyes shut as you sink your teeth into the flesh, the juice trickling down over your open lips - it is bracingly chill and your a mess
really, but
that apple is tart, crisp and filled
with an early summer hope.
