strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the
rest of Creation.”
“Hear!” calls a peeper in the headlights.
“Hear! ” calls a young man trapped in a tank far from home.
“Hear! ” calls a mother whose home is now a burnt-out ruin.There must be an end to this.
By the time I get home it is late and I cannot sleep, so I walk up
the hill to the pond behind my house. Here too the air is ringing with
their calls. I want to light a sweetgrass smudge, to wash away the
sadness in a cloud of smoke. But the fog is too heavy and the
matches just bleed a red streak on the box. As it should be. There
should be no washing away tonight; better to wear the grief like a
sodden coat.
“Weep! Weep!” calls a toad from the water’s edge. And I do. If
grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we
are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.