Tonight's Prayer

The first time.  Though the sun was glinting through the window, flashing its white teeth like a high school quarterback, all I saw was her.  

The fourth time.  I introduced myself to her, because her friends are my friends.  It was Luna, on the patio, and we both spoke warmly to each other, saying, "I have always wanted to get to know you better."  

The last time.  I saw her a few months ago, and, as she stood with her other two tall lean companions, I made a joke about myself, pointing out how my body was not like their bodies.  My hair not like their hair.  My short was eclipsed by their tall. It was awkward, because I had made it so, and yet she said, "All I see are four beautiful women." She was like that, I've heard, gracious and humble in her brilliance.  

Jane Hirshfield, one of her favorite poets, wrote a poem about the ripening of an apple.  The harvesting of an apple, the gratitude of an apple for the earth that tended to it.  And the calm neutrality of the earth that also takes life from living things.  

I am thinking tonight about how we must  love it all.  The seed, the seedling.  The rain that cracks our shell.  The white blossoms.  The wind that carries the pollen.  The fruit that buds and grows.  The fruit that is plucked from the tree.  The core that is tossed into a river.  The river that sweeps it into a lake. Even the heavy fruit that drops, finally, onto the soft land of autumn.  The earth that swallows it whole.  The way it disappears. And the bare branches in early spring, nothing there with them but a silent moon.  The arms of the tree, the way they seem to be reaching,  not only for light, but for the stars and, always too, the darkness that holds them.