Poetic Park Prose

Days like today are magical. I've often been asked, "Which is your favorite, summer or winter?" I've always picked winter because of the hot temps of summer and the mystical grace of a world made pure white. As I've lived, though, I find my greatest joys are not in the extremes but in the beauty in between. Today is such a day.

I sit here at a park; the sound of children's laughter and the clink of grey chain link mix together in my ears. The sun is warm on my back and the wind blows, rustling the hair on my arms. A teenage maple tree sits at my side, her bark cracked and spotted by age, disease and human misuse. But she speaks ever so softly a sound that pierces the chaos and bleeds peace into my soul. The rise and fall and brush and dip of leaves sounding like debutantes petticoats at a cotillion. It's an elegant dance that seems endless in the warm spring wind.

Today is glorious - it moves me so because in the stillness is a soft voice that speaks of other wordly things. Oregon is not grand; it does not smack me in my face with a 2x4 pronouncing the existence of God as other places have. Alaska has the water and mountains and glaciers; Snoqualmie, the falls; and New Mexico, that amazing sky. But here in Oregon, God's presence can be felt in the mellow love of warm spring days and the shadowy embrace of a fully clothed maple.

written Spring 2007

[Have I mentioned that I'm a hopeless romantic?]