the darkness prayer

Four braids. Three, actually, with one still undone. Maia’s tangled black mane reaches to her chest, my fingers run through it, and rainy wind breathes on eastern pasture.

It’s nearly supper, and I haven’t had lunch; a little dizzy, but I don’t notice; long ago I learned to keep myself from fainting. I stand and the world swims, can’t hear, can’t see, hand reaches silently for a wall. But I learn to hide, to sit and look in embroidered purse for something invisible, and no one knows the imminence of a fall. They go on with their lives, and in a few moments, my world returns, and I continue with mine.

Maia breathes free from halter or rope. Fourth braid almost finished, and horse dirt sticks to mane-greased fingers. Maia is not quite sleeping, standing with me in the field. She would be, except for the turkeys poking through violet clover on the far side of the hill. They need watching, suspicious things.

Maia never misses anything. I get dizzy, stop breathing, and she knows, but she also feels when I live the joy of my grandma’s purple-flowered trellis. She never asks me to be anyone I cannot be at this moment, but she does demand I live in all the beauty I can today. This is a good lesson, to live in the moment.

I crouch for the comb in the grass, stand, vision blurs, hand touches Maia’s shoulder, she stays still for me. When I stand and darkness closes in, I don’t think well, and sometimes all I can remember is the presence of God. Then I understand the meaning of prayer.

Asleep in my arms

Into the West

Lay down your sweet and weary head
Night is falling, you have come to journey's end.
Sleep now, and dream of the ones who came before.
They are calling from across the distant shore.

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
all of your fears will pass away,
safe in my arms
you're only sleeping.

What can you see on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea a pale moon rises—
The ships have come to carry you home.

Dawn will turn to silver glass
A light on the water
All souls pass.

Hope fades
into the world of night
through shadows falling
out of memory and time.

Don't say, "We have come now to the end."
White shores are calling
you and I will meet again.
And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping.

What can can you see on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea a pale moon rises—
The ships have come to carry you home.

And all will turn to silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the west.

Good bye, old friend.

Waiting for a ship

The May spring water pulsed over my bare feet, and I curled my toes against the cold. I knew it wasn’t ocean water; it was Lake Michigan water; that didn’t sound as poetic. A half hour ago on this beach in Door County, Wisconsin, my friend and I had stood on the broken shells and looked out at the breathing mist.

Clouds as low as the lake. “Did you ever pretend, when you were a little girl on the beach,” I closed my eyes, “that if you looked long enough at the ocean—at the horizon—were careful not to blink—and just knew, and waited—a ship would come for you?”

My friend has mounted the hill to the house, but I am still in the sand and dawn. Down the beach a clatter of rocks migrates toward the wet horizon, and a seagull preens. When I reach it, my bare feet find their place in the water-washed stone: islands.

“When I am alone on the beach,” my friend told me, “I turn into the wind, turn into the water, and sing.”

But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over 
Neither have I the wings to fly… 
But I'll spend my days in endless roaming, 
Soft is the grass, my bed is free...
On that long road down to the sea. 

If a ship were ever to come for me, it would be now, on the water, in the morning, and perhaps while I sing.