She had a fanciful way of recounting it, in later years, that he privately found cloying and cliched, even as he always put on a self-effacing smile whenever she retold the story. "I felt," she would say, "in the instant his arm went around me to pull me out, that I would be safe, that it would be all right. And I wasn't fool enough to let go, even once I was back on dry land!" Of course, he himself had invented an even more fantastic version of it, albeit one reserved solely for their children while still very young: "I once threw a gold coin into a wishing well," he would tell them, "and out sprang a beautiful nymph, straight into my arms!"

I didn't come out here to stare into the sun,
to try to find the right filter to make sense
of heavenly miracles. I wander through the crowd,
more comfortable (if I am honest) in smaller
settings, simply hoping to find a friend or two
with whom to share a moment standing
companionably outside on such a lovely day.
To lead them, perhaps, to one corner of the green,
neglected in the shade, and admire together
the flickering spaces between the leaves
that have turned all the ground around us
to a carpet of swaying crescents. We
look down at this mosaic spread across
the sidewalk and the lawn, while behind us
the multitude gazes up.

I do not know how to love this world
nearly how I should, but I know at least
that what I love is here, to learn. After the
Ascension, as the disciples stood in shock,
faces upturned, suddenly abandoned, we
are told two figures in white robes came
among them. "Why do you stand about here,
staring into heaven?" they asked. They might
as well have said directly, don't you know how
much there is to do? There are fields to work
in: hay fields, occupational fields. There are so
many kind words needed, so many hands
unheld. And there is so much to learn to love:
strange orbits of the moon, dancing shadows
on the earth, each other, ourselves.

 
         The fluffy black cat sat in the clearing at the top of the hill, and looked up at the stars. The night sky was clear, and brilliant. The cat himself was invisible in the dark grass, except for a glimmer of light reflecting from his eyes.
          His people had stopped calling by now, and tapping dishes, and whatever else they could think of to entice him back. He’d watched them for a time, safely hidden in the bushes, as they searched and called. But he’d already had dinner; what he hadn’t ever had was a chance to spend a night outside. He’d resisted the pull of his stomach and turned away, crossing the road and going up the hill into the woods.
          One of the stars was getting larger. He watched it intently, wondering if it would turn out to be a bug. He quite liked bugs.
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inside, when it's been gone from my life
for so many years? A flutter, like the
briefest of zephyrs stirring a curtain
in my soul. Did I only imagine it?
Is it real? Do I want it to be?
How could it be, after all this time?
The rational voice tells me I should
play it safe, of course. Not to get too
excited about what might just be
my imagination. So I stand up,
but in only a few steps I know,
know for certain the
way the heart knows
true love the way
the ear knows up
held inside.

We were having tea when something I mistook for a grayish-green pit bull blundered into the kitchen. Then I nearly overturned the cream in my double-take.

"Goodness, Gwennie, when on earth did you get a pet with two heads?"

She chuckled and broke off a bit of her pecan scone, holding it permissively below the level of her rocker's seat. The heads extended suddenly, and now I could see the necks were long, like a turtle's when stretching fully out of its shell.

"It's a baby hydra, dear," my aunt explained.

Both heads sensed the proffered treat, and it trundled over like a small bear. But one head was quicker, obliging Gwen to to break off a second bit of scone for the other. She stroked it as both heads explored the floor for crumbs.

"It often seems a little confused," she admitted, "but it's actually still relatively focused, and the training's been going just fine. It's important to do a good job of that early, you know, before it grows more heads -- you can see a third budding already, between the first two. Just there... see?"

I do not know what everyone else may mean
when they speak of the afterlife, the world
to come. I have heard the stories, of course:
of paradise, of resurrection, of going into light.
I wonder how specific, how confident people
really are, noting how often they retreat into

the vagueness of the departed "looking down"
or "being in a better place." Maybe they just
don't want to trespass on anyone else's story,
each of our versions too fragile and precious
to jostle. Maybe to assert it would be to test
it, and they fear it would crumple in their hands.

I hasten to say, I do not begrudge anyone the
comfort that such a story brings. Too many live
lives of such unremitting suffering, and that there
should come an eternal repose of unburdened joy,
of freedom from pain, and want, and fear -- how
could I deny this to them, any more than a warm

blanket to the cold and shivering? I am glad they
have such a story. That is all we have, in the end.
Of course, I have been undeservedly lucky. I have
my share of stories to tie my loose ends together,
but I do not need that one. I know whatever story
we might tell about this, we tell for our own reasons;

we will not know until, each one, we find out for
ourselves. So I think of death as another country,
and as when traveling I try to hold no expectations,
preferring instead to take that adventure as it comes.
When it comes. And if there is in fact nothing more,
and only this moment has been all we ever had,

of the Resurrection: that this is my body, to be given
for many; and I, content if it goes merely to a million
million generations of Silphidae beetles and timothy
grass and grasshoppers and moonflowers. For a
little time it was given to me to appreciate as poorly

as I have managed, and I will rejoice in the end to
give it back so that these small and precious beings
might have as well the gift of life, everlasting.