When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
-Mary Oliver
The river is still high. Not flood stage but what is called full bank. I don't know what that means. It is another day of rain. The rain is gift falling on gift. At least here it is. It will stop and when it does it is a punishing stop. The beautiful green that surrounds dissolves into brown and ochre and a million shades of gray. Thorns are no longer masked by flowers. It is all beautiful too. It is this land's default. Muted color and thorn.
Spring is its party. It's fiesta.
I can't shake the feeling of helplessness for all of my fellow travelers on the planet as fear and suffering move about with the plague. Almost randomly. It infects because we touch each other. That breaches some kind of fundamental decency. The virus travels because we reach out to each other. Indecent.
And there are those whose lives were and are married to amazement. There are those whose lives are married to service. Showing up. Truck drivers, nurses, doctors, cashiers. the list is almost endless.
showing up.
That is when I am married to amazement. They take the world in their arms. They drive to the warehouse. They take the blood pressure of the frightened.
They stock the canned goods.