While away, the bonsai had fully bloomed, and its tiny white tendrils had burst and shed. When I returned, the skeleton of blossom hanging in mid-air seemed the anatomy of a star that had lost its power to hide in the day. And oddly, I feel like that, no longer capable of hiding in the light, conspicuous wherever I am . . .

The next day Robert and I jogged through rows of secluded pines, breathing in rhythms neither his nor mine, and sweating and panting, hands on his knees, he said to me, “If we could only inhabit our lives . . .” And two days later, I jogged with my dog up and down the hill near my home and found that running off the peak touched me so. I used to push all the way up, eyes to the road, step after step, just to make it to the top. But here, coming off the peak, seeing the wind brace the willows as I crested and eased on down—this released joy, not going up, but coming down. Who would have guessed? We have simply fallen beneath the surface of things.

Knowing God

KNOWING GOD

Oh lone crazed bird

singing in the night—

you sing with your whole body

while the rest of us sleep.

I go to close the window

when my wife touches my arm

and we listen.

You call out

like a saint robbed of words.

Are you blind and trapped

in a vision of sun?

Or do you simply see farther

than the rest of us?

Do you see the light coming?

Do you feel the beads of warmth

forming in the dark?

Oh what has stirred

that thing in you that sings?

Stir me now.

Sing me clean.

The Garage

THE GARAGE

This took place while planning for Ann to have her hysterectomy. She was doing her doctoral work in New York that summer and was home only on weekends.

That first week away, I thought, with her life so pulled and splintered, I could at least keep our home in order. So often, when things become chaotic and complex, she involves herself in cleaning or fixing or refinishing. But here, there wasn’t even time to affect such a sublimation when she needed it most.

I sought to surprise her and do something she has asked for years—clean the garage, which had become a quagmire of suburban refuse: tires to cars long gone, copper caps to nothing, buckets with split bottoms, unraveled wicker baskets, fluorescent lamps with no bulbs, cardboard boxes to appliances we can’t even find, rusted hibachis, labelless wine, sandpaper worn smooth, and oh yes, dead mice floating in an open bottle of anti-freeze. It took fourteen hours, three trips to the dump and two to the Salvation Army. I was pleased. I had scaled the inept homeowner’s Everest. The summit was sparse, swept, labeled, organized, symmetric, emitting a rational if sterile peace.