July 21, 2006

Birds of the air...

Morning began with the psalms and W.S. Merwin…To the Corner of the Eye. The poem brought to mind Peter L. Berger’s A Rumor of Angels and the suggestion of Presence, tracers of the holy, the redemptive presence of a Christ

suffusing the empirical world. Joshua … ordered by the commander of the army of the Lord to remove his shoes;

he was on sacred ground, and so amidst the black-eyed Susans and as brown thrashers and red-bellied woodpeckers fed on the suet dough

I prayed

and in some small way re-sanctified again that little space beneath the blue canopy where I live…hope.

The hair remains the most discomfiting.

There is often the urge to tug on the back of the wig, to pull it down, to re-place it. It irritates the back of the head just above the nape around the occipital bone, that slight protrusion providentially provided as an anchor for a later day wig; the scalp, there, is reddened and rashy. It is hot. It is summer in Atlanta.

The wig…or its source, the hair loss…continues to be the cause of anger, the sign of the dis-ease. The hair doesn’t exactly fall out, in part because it has been sheared. Rather, it recedes in uneven patches. Thighs are smooth; calves still a bit stubbly, eye brows have thinned, lashes remain. You notice these small things, take account of them as if the proverbial birds of the air so attended to by the heavenly Father, and are we not of more value than they?

This is a reflection on that

which is

precious.