31 january, loss for words

It’s a cold, raw and windy Sunday.  Wrapped

in heavy knit cap, thick gloves and layers, I step

out for my routine walk down Parker Avenue.  I

hear the bells from the white-spired church nearby.

The tolling lulls me into daydreaming of that African

Methodist church in Chicago across from my son’s

place during a visit.  I was venturing out to pick up

something special for breakfast when I heard this

music, choral music, of such beauty to stop me in

my tracks. Paper-thin layered voices riffled through

the cracked-open windows of that simple, white wood-

frame church.  I cast about in my head for words in

an attempt to do justice to what I heard.  No, none. 

So, as I’m walking down Charles Street, I decide to

consult the natural world – maybe something like

a pale-yellow maple leaf set loose, floating, hardly

descending, going sideways a half-turn while tipping

ever so slightly, before finally joining the windfall

brethren bedded below in silence.  No, that won’t do.

Overdone, that one. About to give up, and with my

home in sight up the hill, I manage to imagine a willow

leaf – slender, tapered, lance-like shape – dropping

from this pond-side weeping tree, almost a plummet,

spinning silver all the way down over the water below

but missing the water, landing on a lily pad, on the lily’s

burning-yellow stamens, the center of all yearning.  I’m

back home. I sit in my reading chair, admitting, accepting

that neither will suffice – that the voices in the hymn they

sung soared to the heavens and drifted back. I only heard

the earthly return.  Enough for then, enough for now.