Lost and Found

It was a watercolor layering of "What Dreams May Come"-like intensity, and all the metaphors heaped up against my eyelids don't begin to paint the picture true. It's likely not the words that are weak, but the wielder's practice of them...when the images spin you round in their flight, and you stand gaping in astonishment that one is capable of oblivious disregard: that any breathing human is not stopped still, frozen in wonder at the unfolding spectacle.

And still I recognize that it was nothing dramatic enough to reach most of us, nothing more than vivid green on cerulean blue, fig and citrus and rose entwined in breezy exhalation, and crisp shadows backlighting the deep silence that overlay ordinary sound. Motors hummed, chain clinked on the empty flagpole, wings moved the air, and all of this could be heard so crystal clear but muted as if through water.

What was it that compelled me to soak in it, when others took no note? What did I hear? Was it something I felt? that I saw, if just in unthinking perhipheral glance? If I profess religion at all, this would be the manifestation: that life itself is honored as sacred gift. That struggle cannot truly blind those who wish to see. That sorrow feeds the soul as fully as joy, in equal measure, and neither reigns supreme in the end.

Words and pictures build the hymns, and maybe the saddest lyric ever written is as simple as this: "the day the music died." And while it's not me who will teach the world to sing, I'm not too proud to sing a little backup right out loud when a happy dance shakes me on down.