Crafted at Word Lovers at River's Edge

BY A THREAD Clutching what we have hollows our words into platitudes, Empty promises cloud the connection between your eyes and mine. We are not sorry for anyone’s loss, nor will we miss each other, Our heavy black bags drag life from our souls until they are As cancelled as a life insurance policy, a corpse-like non-person. What I lost in that office that was my home for ten years Was the innocence of a child’s trust in her parent. I am forsaken, fearful, without an oar but in a kayak, Floating on striated rivers watched by white-headed eagles And shoreline totem poles that exude the voices of the Ancients. Lolled to comfort as the valley’s shadows move with the sun; The transient physical world is light and dark and gray, unfocused. While seeking that which cannot be seen, the flow of the river, the wind against my cheek, the rowing of our arms help me forget that office above Browns stadium with Lake Erie beyond, The place where belief was suspended, and I was dying. Beneath a wide open sky in a wall-less arena, First Peoples whisper what is required: to be present and connected and One. Mother Earth and the Holy Spirit gladden my expanded heart. I remember home: red maples over my head, buckeyes under foot, And paths winding along the Rocky River and the Crooked River Trampled by the Hopewell peoples and Western Reserve settlers. “Kum Ba Yah,” roof-shingling ghetto mission trips, hands in prayer, time spreads out before me, a person of worth and loved. Future possibilities tango with remembrances of the past. On our 35th wedding anniversary at a log cabin restaurant, my husband snuggles next to me instead of across from me. He leans over to kiss my cheek and erase my stunned pain that he sometimes views the world differently from me and happily-ever-after is a keen deception that brings tears to my eyes. We hold on by a tight and strong thread; gratitude confounds me. He travels with me to faraway places to help me know what’s real And walks with me along the rivers at home to keep me grounded. The scary stuff is torn away, dismantled, scourged.