Mending

Rain ticks lightly against my face like blunt, cool needles. I walk slowly up the small hill. Grass is long. So, so green. Flecked with yellow maple leaves. No, carpeted. I like the way everything feels soft beneath my feet.

Under the pine, the woods are illumined as if from the inside out. Day is almost gone, the sky a deep grey. But the yellows of maple and various unknown bushes glow. Light without source, so it seems.

One leaf hangs from the swing rope, and a tiny brown bird is foraging in the ivy. Cardinals dart from the pine to masses of bird-berry bushes. Maple leaves flip and bob— like hands of a dancer or maybe old men who want to say hello.

Each thing, each and every thing here seems to heal me from the inside out. As if each were put here just for me, just for this moment... to mend. Rain ticks lightly against my face like blunt, cool needles. Mending, mending.

Whisper

Black-capped chickadees tip and tumble in the hemlocks. Jays dart to the bird-berry bushes which are full with red autumn gifts, round and small. The maple tosses orange and gold to a blue sky, fading. Day is going down.

The pine stands tall, as does the house, bathing me in shadow. Blueberry bushes fan crimson leaves in the breeze. Bronze needles have flung themselves as one over the grass. Green and bronze kiss, embrace, quiet. A long body of love.

But this is what pierces my soul. The breath of wings floating upward, a tiny moth. Captured the light on its wings just right. And I was here to see it. A barely-there grace, a whisper, new drifting from Your hand.