Snow Owls, Marshes

It's been a strange day, a strange week, maybe even a strange month - I wrote and wrote and wrote, often after long work days, until writing was done and nothing but exhaustion remained. Now, I'm thankful that that time is finished, though sad as well.
I drove a long ways today, from home to home. Washington is my first love, and as my friends all get married and disappear on new adventures, I wonder whether my footsteps might eventually return me there. There is a music in the hills that sets my spirit free so easily when I visit my parents' home, and I wonder if I might love Washington more.
The tall grasses, thick with a morning hoarfrost light as a dusting of snow, and the marshy woodlands with mossy limbs and knuckled, gnarly branches beckon to me. The evergreens tall and stately address my verdant needs, but its winter falling today. Why do swamps sound eerie and sodden, or marshes mushy and miserable? Can this, the most beautiful of lands, a bog be? Cobalt-plumed jays whistle away and the snow owl, rare sight indeed, gazes on with golden-gleaming eyes like the wolf of the skies.
It's the golden grasslands, the odious skunkweed, the tendrils of fog like clouds left behind and lost in this ghost of a land, and ramshackle homes that must be empty, empty, empty as the eyes on the longest of nights. No, maybe it is the dreamy rendering, and knowing that if I left this road and followed the lights, I may wander this exemplary purgatory forever, swimming in the grasses with that doe, that deer whose heart I follow through the mists.

I discussed sharks with one of my roommates. We were contemplating spiritual direction and one of my favorite passages of the Kite Runner, and it transformed into a discussion on Christianity and sharks.

I drove a billion hours and collapsed in a heap when I arrived. I started reading again, delving into The Story of Art, Sin City, Selected Poems by ee cummings, Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, White Pine by Mary Oliver, and a Helprin novel (thanks J - he's actually quite wonderful), and an Agatha Christie (too late, huh Matthew?).
I usually only read one book at a time, but I just missed reading so much I read everything until I fell asleep.


This is what holiness is
or perhaps is, I cannot tell
when the marsh is full of fog
the hands of the trees cup the mists
like the wisps of dreams and forgotten things
and you ask - must you always ask?
if I promise
I promise I'll love thee, love thee
love thee beneath the shadow of the willow
in the months of moss and rainy days
and forever if you allow,
set apart in these reeds and grasses
with a heart of eternity and grace