Saved by a Smile

Perhaps the miracle does not conclude the tragedy, it removes it altogether, as light does shadow. It would seem a perfect joy to me to lie still in this darkness – to sink away, remaining awake. To be nothing but an arm across a pillow, a shoulder beneath a sheet.

Maybe when we stop making sense, then we have a chance to find it as it scatters unpredictably and floats in particles without wings. Halfway between sleeping and waking, I feel a tenderness between my lips. Real miracles make little noise. Nothing has been said. Yet everything is resolved.

The Focal Point is Everywhere

Perhaps the steady buzz and whir of insects in the field around me draws my attention to a sparkling flower, no bigger than a snowflake. Moving my eye itself when looking at something that doesn't move deepens my sense of calm.

Maybe, with a simple tilt of my head, a different kind of world is made to appear that says: when too much is still not enough, or is an echo of what is yet to be, I should listen to the insects until I no longer hear them. Last week’s lilacs cast fragrant shadows against the curve of my wrist. Sun-warmed distances to be worshiped without ever knowing.

Solar Music (after Remedios Varo)

Perhaps a woman plays a stringed sunbeam with her bow, and the resulting music releases buds in the trees from their cocoon-like nests while causing grasses and flowers to spring from her cloak.

Or maybe like a soft, uncovered moon passing through the thickest branches of the evening, her hand rises slowly above all places to create the focus of the forest that encircles her. Reflected in a wheel of light inside water at the center of a pond, violet-tinged wings course across the face of her palette where a laden brush, in depositing paint on canvas, hardly registers a sound.