I
When I first felt that delicate brush that soft touch of something more, something other a wider awareness. Was it some where beyond myself. Hearing a voice but there was no voice no words no thoughts only a gentle touch. I felt it come toward me above the left side of my head, something from above. I was in the little church in Bowness not far from our house. In Sunday School. Sitting at a table, a teacher and four other children some crayons, broken all of them some pieces short, some long and paper. It was ok that the crayons were broken. I didn’t know how to use them, or I didn’t care. They scraped across the paper and left no mark. Too many hands had clutched them before perhaps. I don’t know. But I’ve always remembered that little touch from a hand that wasn’t there, it moved as soft as a glance from eyes not mine.
II
After my mother died the touch came again. Angels? Her spirit? I don’t know. I did not need to name what I felt. The day after her funeral when I woke up in the morning. I heard the sound of music felt a soft warmth around me. The music came each morning all the years I was growing up. In my mind. Inside that quiet morning place. It stayed with me until I left the room. I learned to listen for it and there it was in that moment Not always the same. Sometimes one kind of music sometimes another. Sometimes a tune I already knew. Sometimes a tune from another place. It’s kind of hard to remember now to put it into words and yet the memory is perfectly clear. It was always there. Until I woke up one day and it was gone. Vanished. I felt bereft, used to companionship.
III
It’s come back each morning, once again. Like writing a poem some of it’s already inside. Some of it’s not. Sometimes it comes from a plane that is like memory but is not quite memory. Like the day I drove across the bridge and down along the river just to see the water shining. I didn’t need to drive down that road for any other reason but I wanted to remember the look of bright sun running with water, edged with little rivulets and glister. I saw birds flying. Crows playing with the wind. As I drove I thought about how when birds fly their wings leave a trace in the sky. In church that morning so many years ago did the other children at the table beside me feel that touch? Were any of them looking up trying to catch their eyes on that flow, that trace of movement?
IV
A wing in flight a touch, a glance this is the lingering presence of those angels, or of birds, their feathers ruffling the wind, trackless, they lift themselves along toward their hidden purpose. Birds’ wings leave presence in the sky as they float over the river ice following the meltwater. As they flow, words, as birds, take free flight Beat upward and rise toward light falling on water lifted up by the merest glance from eyes not mine gliding along the shimmers, glimmers reflected.
V
See, in-take the layers of light as the birds do. We don’t often see them, the colors hidden The birds know how to look.
VI
Sometimes the inner morning sounds I hear are quite symphonic complex and full with melodies that rise and fall. Swell and fade. Crow hears music, perhaps the same. She comes. Beats toward me, her wings rise and fall. Comes to earth beside me. Catches me to her heart. Carries me to my work. Today we, together, Crow and I and the angels never stop singing. We bend, we lift what must become, what is waiting to be born and take wing out of solid rock. Out of the slow moving of mind. With slow waiting comes something more. With long fastened-tight-open hands and eyes that resist the fading of those traces of flight. Call it focus What my grandmother called Endurance. Strong patience Angel turns the rock into water. Wind lifts, and scatters that water as rain over earth and from there comes the growth. The pine tree, blasted on the mountain top black with wind, black from lonely, frosted nights that never seem to end. Or perhaps a fall of nasturtium blossoms scarlet and golden across the garden fence a jar of tea made from mint and chamomile and bit of pineapple sage. A spoonful of parsley a fingerful of thyme. Always the parsley. Always the thyme. Always the heart of nasturtiums, open always the pines, bending with the wind.
