Hungry for the beautiful things.

"It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."  -- George Eliot


The metal planter rusted below the apple tree near the broken wood planks that served as a "bridge" across the wider part of the irrigation ditch.  This was a sacred place that spoke of love and history, the hunger for the apple and the ear.  The blue house rested 3 acres down the hill, and I lived in it, under the ground in the bedroom in the corner.

"Is this going to be your bedroom then?" Grandpa asked.

"Yes, this one here," I said even though it was nothing more than a few rebar stakes marking where the concrete foundation would be poured.

"It's far away from the other rooms."  Pause.   "I like to be alone, too," he said.  And somehow, he seemed to turn into a hawk at that point in my memory, lifting himself from that dirt floor that would one day be "a room of my own" and he flew above me, alone, watching, part of the air and the invisible hand that lifted him there.

The rain was coming down, so I put on the long, green army jacket I'd been hiding in lately.  The clunky wind chime I'd made in art class in one hand and Patches beside me with her skittish gate, head bowed from the past abuse she'd come away from.  (The Lord asks us not to punish or kill our animals with cruelty.  All things in that gentle hand, the one that understands what it means to end the life of something He created.)  And the rain came down through the fields, down through the leaves, darkening bark of trees.  June, and I was free from school, in my room and writing, reading, listening to music all day.  Now out in the rain that shiver patters through the leaves.  I hang the wind chime there, pick a tart green apple, and fly straight into the air, up through the rain that washes us.