Mere
by Kate Skinner
There is a window in my home.
There are many windows, but there is one in particular that I find myself bewitched by. I gaze, quite often out of this portal to the space outdoors. To many others, it may very well be just a window.
But alas, it is not.
It’s a kitchen window.
Satisfyingly, I do it often. When rinsing off some green, yellow, orange, red herbaceous creation, washing a dish, or now and then, with a steaming companion of caffeine. I stand, lean, pause, just there.
I allow my eyes to land on something, everything or nothing. I am held spellbound by the flurry of rest, that very moment, breath.
My eyes occasionally land on a paint chip, signing to me the wear on the deck, the landing pad of hilarity, weeping, transformation; life lived in our tribe. This morning there are half-filled, finger smudged mason jars and scattered dessert debris. Haphazard chairs that, in just the evening before, had friends dwelling there, leaving their indentation.
I love this window — this time machine.
I see the immediate, the close, the sacred.
And then, my eyes wander to the neighbor, where his raised beds peep just beyond the fence line. How many morning have I lingered here, watching as he speaks love, life, over his beds. How many daysprings have I admired his careful cultivation, like clockwork. I long for a love like he has for the herbs. Smell the aroma of the intensity of affection.
What stories he must have. What life he has lived.
Like an elevator descent back to the hallowed, proximal- my eyes shift in between the wooden slats of our landing pad to the chiminea revealing herself below. As a moth drawn to the lamp, the coals a dusky grey that I’ll never truly understand beckon me to the haze, to the intricate waltz of the flames reaching high, spreading wider. An dull ache in my instep reminds me of my bare footed self, navigating the pebbled spot below.
I step designedly, pausing to look around, aching to commit to memory this feeling, this corner of the universe bestowed upon me.
Sparks climb, float, ascend. How that must be — to travel without twinge of cause, qualm, direction, destination. To be launched but never land.
I believe that promises will be fulfilled. Perhaps not in my timing. Perhaps not in my method or medium.
But I am not merely a spark. I was created for flame-hood.
So this chiminea, come to it. Take up your seat. Experience the flame-hood. The coals are forming, the embers gleaming. Feel the warmth of its burning, the power found in sparks forming blaze.
So dear flame, I cannot resolve when this window is more cherished. In the morning? When the crest of light caresses the particles twirling and you catch the breeze in the mother oak tree?
Or, at night? When the smoke twists, rises from the flame-hood and the twinkle of our criss crossed lights illuminates the lawn and her denizens, immeasurably treasured faces around her.
How do I choose which is more dazzling? Can I?
I watch this world ebb and flow from the window. I see brio and fidelity form and join one another in the bonding of lives, of souls created for oneness.
And then I watch nothing at all. Such a gift is this. The spectrum of seeing, hearing, knowing, believing.
In kind, is this corner of creation.
From this place I am bestowed nothing and everything. None and all.
This paradoxical journey from none to some, one to all. Home to home.
