After Mountain Landscape with Bridge by Thomas Gainsborough


I’ve come to see the sun flick over stones in moments of 
gentle flashing, to think how fast a memory becomes its 
own illusion. I’m here because what we call the soul—
that almost visual echo—is always close to holiness. 

A birch on the shoreline shapes itself to the breeze; 
aspens tremble as if this moment were all there is between 
one beauty and another, between mystery and revelation. 
Here, there is no revision, no opposite for recollection. 

Once, late in the day, my father and I fished beneath 
this bridge. I was seven or eight, and small trout 
shone underwater, quietly golden. On the only road home, 
we were part of the shadows’ perfection (trees and what 

was left of the sky). As we walked between hills (close 
in the last light), my pail of water filled with stars, 
and the sun came down, fallen from a larger light that, 
far too soon, my father walked into and was gone.
                        

After Spring by Georgia O’Keeffe

So here you are—by yourself because that’s what you choose. 
Whether it’s evening or late afternoon (more dark, more light) 
doesn’t matter, the need to measure things becomes less 
and less important. Lately, you think how life rushes 
through everything—unsettled dreams and things that will 
never happen again. In a week or two, the lilacs will bloom; 
dogwoods will float like watered silk. It’s ironic that all 

your seasons have led to reverence for things that 
move slowly; how you, like anything ordinary, changed 
without breaking. A dog barks on the street behind you, 
the sound distantly familiar. Language. Landscape. 
In one of the trees, a small bird sings—this one bird’s 
one song only for you because you are alone, and you 
hear it the way you can almost hear the time between breaths.
                        

After The Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse

We know so little of things for which we pray. 
Humility. Forgiveness. And no idea what soul 
really means—its before and after, life after this … 
life … in timeless life—a vastness so remote we can’t 
imagine it. Morning, like light on the other side of 
frosted glass, clears into color. Starlings braid a 
pattern into the sky then vanish in what little time 
it takes to mark their flight. Beside me, a pinecone 
drops to the ground. This kind of purity comes to us 
without intention—in ordinary things that are 
anything but ordinary: the way sun lights a room at 
different angles, the way air moves behind us. 
It’s about how we move, how we let the world twist 
through us as we twist through the world—like 
everything given to gravity—doing and doing. 
And here (as far as here goes), it’s about what doesn’t 
separate us from ourselves—what’s permanent, 
what’s not. It’s everything we turn toward—
whatever signs we find of wonder and joy.