This chapter has my heart draped in heaviness, though the heaviness it wears like a garment; dressed raw, raw love. The sky and the butterflies are my witnesses. A hum outside drives deep and settles at home, on that sole wooden bench just opposite the brooding fire. I too sit quietly as you fill the shadow next to me. Light: you overrun my soul and swarm the edge of me. Your waking erupts, breaks out of a remoteness foreign to me, in a single stride conquering every outpost of my existence. And so, I fall.

Low blackbird flap and whistle – space, though infinitely wide, hold my hand. Set sail, old friend, I missed your trusted tremble, now passionately disrupting me. Your calling advances through me, through the crust of the earth, as sunlight hails roots to press, and then pulls and pulls the strands of life. Sprouts. And flowers. And trees.

And as buds turn their heads they transform and blossom. I mistake their quiet disposition and overlook their drive to live out an ingrained plan. I slip on my vigilance and observe. The surge so plainly visible over time, yet mysteriously hidden. I lean against bark, and carefully place bare feet on ground, rest eyes and mind. In my innermost I search out the same light that knocks on every bud with its caring and determined capacity to wake the heart of all creation.

Its presence disturbs me. I cannot ignore the call. I want to because my reality I so prudently built is threatened to collapse. I wonder if this is how bud feels before blossom, and if the snowbell knows of its ring before present. The same before-before rings and sings through me. Where is the seed planted that now stirs and responds? And where the roots that quiver outwards? Branches unclad legs, exposed neck, and leaves on fingers and nails. Then turn to touch. Here warmth.

I fail to shake the grain out of my system. I really have no choice, but to embrace and tie my rope to life, now beckoning me to taste fully. I step aside and allow. I open. Life curiously schemes and prepares in hidden cavities, and then bursts forth freely, withholding nothing, smashing out of me, into me, cracking my nucleus to wildly chase the winds and climb the bark and climb the branch and reach the sky, to breath and breath again, and yell „I am“!

So here I am, welcoming spring.

I run in veins and hymns of birds and flowers, and drink from the basin of unity. Lay down your arms and tire into mine.

Peace.

A tilt in time and my life spills into age. It grows on me, age. Although I have addressed it with a soft touch to the cheek, I embrace neither time nor age. Regardless, both rest in my heart beating out of its confines and wait to be seized by that, which holds all: my origin, my home.

In deep and low breath I taste life. And I sink further into life. It grips me, not with cold hands, but with the caring urgency of one who mothers patience in every cell. I taste a morsel, then, fall to the chase as I stir and wake, and wake and stir.  No reckless raid or sweep, only a careful scrutiny veiled in the robes of a novice and consumed by the possibility that this is it.

Light on, window frames, light on moon and man and the tip of. A paper thin sliver of light. I see it merely because I know the hush of light on light like any traveler in timeless time. No piece did I learn or attain. There is no teaching in this vastness that isn’t already known. And though I sense rain, nothing washes out light

, and despite my curtains drawn on days, light never begs or burns for entry. How may I house light, if the same presence already marks every part of me?