Spooky is running along the reedy shore of a sun-warmed dream lake with a tribe of wild jackals. I enter through the white heart of his chest. His elegant dog’s body is a portal to the spirits, and I emerge on the inside stillness of time, receptive. Spooky’s black body is now a sharp shadow outside, but inside, a rope of sandalwood beads leads me farther into his wilderness. I am counting drumbeats, breath, the fragrant pulses of love. I hear a drumming gallop like a miniature horse. His body is diamond black, sleek, sealskin. A shape-shifting Kelpie. Anubis, the god of Spooky, reignites his soul’s essence and incense rises again from the top of his head. He had this talent in life, before the sufferings of old age, and now this sweetness has returned. From now, we will meet in this wood between the worlds: refined pine forest, black spindles fanning into orange and purple twilight. We will meet again in this would between the words: aligned spine forest, whorled spine cones of light tracking love’s path back and back…
I am backbending at yoga, absorbed into my own drumming heart. Water pours out pores out pours. In the mirror, I move to bisect my body with the mirror’s edge and pray I can walk in two worlds at one time. I pray for my heart to be a clear mirror of wild love. I create diamond shapes, triangles, elbows become teepees. I fold myself precisely: a love letter to Spooky. Homage to his once effortless, regal grace. A gold disc swings hypnotically at the hollow of my throat. I watch intently as I hold each pose through heart water rushing, pounding. Outside clouds dissolve and the sun beats brightly into longing, light and heat releasing, easing. Rooftops out the window are triangles, diamonds. Icicles weeping. At home, Sean is planting his body in our backyard corner garden. Underwater, under a thick layer of snow water and earth. In the mirror I am sorrow’s love prayer throbbing: love, love, love says the heart pounding, counting, longing for its whole shape to uneclipse.
The teacher says look at the floor four feet in front of you.
The dark blue towel of the yogi in front of me is suddenly a whispering vision.
I am grateful and enchanted by nature suddenly animate. Faces peering from tree branches and knotty spirals of bark, an oil slick on water becomes the mouth of a goddess. Of course clouds and myriad flickering shadows and reflections. These pareidolias sometimes arrive as a synchronistic bridge, or an imprint of the invisible inner world onto the one we all look at, point to, try to wring understanding from.
We walk in the woods with our dogs. We walk in the exquisite grass meadows. We walk through every season, each element. Walking, we are going nowhere, but we must go. We long to go. Spooky is the leader - he demands it. Going nowhere, we are freed from striving. Thus free, the natural world arrives in its own language. And it responds to grief.
We were walking in the woods on a Thanksgiving morning months after my Aunt’s death. Grief still heavy on my heart. For me, grief often comes with the stabbing pain of inadequacy: I could have done more, I should have done more. I don’t know what is enough, I am sorry, I am so sorry, I could not save you from suffering, I am so sorry. I am wearing her gloves and they still smell like her. I am sorry, please forgive me. Her stroke and coma. We had to decide for her, watch and wait over a week as ICU fluid drained, morphine pumped in. I labored with her in the Hospice room, but could not find solace, except for this: staring out the hospital window, it was brick through thick glass. The dullness dissolving attention to her, I lapse back to interiority, missing the moment when it shifts, and the dry light begins flashing in winged murmuration. A small flock of starlings float silent circles in the dark brick cul-de sac of the hospital wing. It seemed a tight and unlikely space for such elegant, asymmetrical displays. The birds’ rhythmic movements stirred the flat winter sky, somehow reminding me of a porch glider’s whoosh on a thick summer afternoon, or the gentle push and pull of lake water erasing its own soft edges. Their motion and presence gentled my breathing. I thought it was a chance sighting – some lucky moment before turning back to the room - however, each time I drove to the hospital (was it the time of day?) there they were, like a prayer, filling a hopeless spot with uncanny drifting, revolving, hovering; with wings and invisible currents. Messengers of the passage…
The dogs and Sean are ahead of me, I am crying, walking, silently reciting my begging prayer. From the corner of my eye, light. I look over at a spider web, dew soaked and shining. However, it is the shape of an angel, with wings outstretched. The delicate shape of grace. I feel my Aunt thanking me, showing me her astonishing new form. After I catch up with Sean and the dogs, I think I should have taken a picture. I go back to try and find it, and cannot.
As I write this, it is thundersnowing. A new season of between.
So, the dark blue towel of the yogi in front of me is suddenly a whispering vision…
It is not a simple face, but a personal / transpersonal image that speaks directly to me, emerging from the ground, etched into the folds and sweat. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa, wearing a crown of roses, and in her arms, she is holding my darling Spooky. It is somewhat funny of course, because there are Spooky’s pointy ears and panting grin in place of Christ. She is holding him with the same tenderness as her own divine child. (Our house is filled with many spirits, but it is this Black Madonna that Sean fills and offers three bowls of water to in the crook of an altar in our room between the rooms.) I am mesmerized by the image appearing four feet in front of me, complete with light shining (bleach spots on the towel) in the position of her third eye and heart. The Yogi has placed his towel over a line on the carpet. The image is below the line – it is underneath, underground. He does his postures above this line, leaving it for me to receive. I know that Sean is putting Spooky’s body into the earth right now. He is being embraced in love. I want to hold onto this image, this miracle. I look away and look back. Still there. I memorize it. My heart is pounding wildly. The standing series is over. I lay on the ground and the ground holds me. Water pouring, blood purring in grief’s lacuna. A love letter given and received.
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