i dreamt we were walking together in an orchard. i kept asking you, over and over,
where are the paw paws?

like
like

where are the delicate little treasures?

cause i'm hungry.

"In Louisville, on a corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers...I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. If only Everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is not way of telling people that they are all walking around Shining like the Sun!"

from...Thomas Merton. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

happy easter, shining sun.

today,

3 years ago you threw a red bike into the streets of chelsea and i looked you up and down. we had no idea what was on its way. i can remember being introduced to you and shaking your hand (how silly) and the flannel shirt you wore, and the wool hat, and the way you crossed your legs at the table (which i found very cute), and seeing your wounded wrist (gross) and watching you get egg salad in your beard (endearing), and you dropping your bike 3 times as you were saying goodnite (which could make a girl feel good that she could do that to a boy).

i don't give a shit what has happened or is happening. the only thing i want today is to sit for beers with you (guinness. miller high life.) and just be. i want to steal life for a day with you. you are too far away and i don't care to reason with myself today about why that is, all i can do is just feel the wrongness of it.

i miss you.
i love you.

i was a lover

before this war.

This is the day
that the Lord has made
This early morning after a
restless night
Sixty one degrees
humbling gathering sunlight in the backyard with children
making mudpies
making pies
This day,
finches on the ivy vine
a beautiful day
and i'm kicking stones around the street
with barely a word in my lungs
Even this is the day that the Lord God made
a visit to my aching father
looking more like a newborn each day
so smooth and soft
the confusion of my own aging hands against his
it is one more day, no matter good or bad
it is still a day and i need all of them right now
this one, with my family and
this one alone
crying in the car
hot, hot tears
This body cannot contain the magnitude of these things
where everything ugly rests up against everything lovely
and somehow in the cries of help, i'm sorry, and thank you
finds a Hallelujah with volume
All the trees of the field clap their hands or beat their fists, I don't know
how this works or how it ever ends, but okay.
Surely, it is all Hallelujah.

friday night, my mom and i went to see anne lamott speak on her new book. she is funny. bizarrely holy. she is comfortably aging, and that makes me feel comfort. it actually makes me feel very young.

she wrote a book called Travelling Mercies that really changed me in that way that only good, truthful books can do. i think i might've asked you to read it at the height of a growing season, and possibly in the middle of War and Peace...two very involved projects. either way, i know you didn't get to read it. But i always wanted you to read it. or to read it out loud to you.

i read it in june of 2005, while sitting on a plastic chair in goshen, guarding a cherry tree from pesky birds. the book, it so happens, is the reason why i wasn't getting much guarding done.

you can blame anne lamott for the full bellies of the birds that year.