Breath Of Heaven

Here is the breath of eternity -- this exhale that blurs road, hills,
forest, the Sound. At the rim of Tramp Harbor the shy scarf of sky
dips into pale-as-milk water. You cannot tell one from the other,
water from sky, sky from mist. They border me like a secret. On the
other side are angels, or the fairy folk known as the Sidhe.

At the water's edge a heron poises on one leg, the picture of a tea
garden ornament. The rotted pilings of a no-longer pier bump outward,
afterthoughts that replicate the jumbled colonnade of totems in my
forest. My totems, however, were not carved and placed by humans.
They are Douglas fir or western hemlock that sickened and died long
ago but remain stunted and standing, for now. Chiseled to mottled
perfection by piliated woodpeckers, bark beetles, rain, time, they
are disintegrating beacons that mutter of forgotten ages.

I am reminded of the Old English poem called ``The Ruin''.*

``Snapped rooftrees, towers fallen,

the work of the Giants, the stonesmiths

mouldereth..''.

More than a thousand years ago an Anglo-Saxon poet, a scop, walked
a ruined Roman city, awed and fearful that such edifices could be
scoured by time, by the powerful force known as Wyrd -- fate or destiny.
Wandering in my own time, I try to imagine the Vashon Island of seven
generations past.   Instead of the population of 13,000 or so of today,
 a band of Shomamish Indians numbering no
more than six or seven hundred called this place home. High thick
trees of a dense unlogged forest, giant ferns and heavy undergrowth,
the rich deep earth of decay and replenishment -- the past, even  two
centuries close, is almost as inscrutible to me as that Roman city
was to the scop.

I do know this: when I walk in that stretch of upper woods with the
totems and the fallen hemlock whose broken limbs curve like rib bones
in that place my daughter named the Courtyard of Whales -- I do not
see the finality of either Wyrd or my culture's destruction of habitat.
I glimpse the cycle here, endings and beginnings: the scatter of pine
cones on the forest floor, the eruption of seedlings, the young trees
breathing, the sick and old trees giving their huge selves back to
the forest as totems or nurse logs that support a celebration of living
communities -- plant, animal, insect, fungal, microbial. Though the
scrawled secrets of the beetles vanish as the bark disintegrates at
one's touch, new messages emerge, shaped by the multitude of protozoa,
tiny invertebrates, bacteria, and other miniscule creatures who transform
forest litter into life-giving soil.

The pilings in Tramp harbor are decomposing as well, though they are
more akin to the Roman ruins than to the trees. No living giants rise
to replace them. Still, they do give a home to creatures below, to
sea stars and barnacles, to crustations and chiton. The totems in
the forest are dwarfed by their living cousins. The pilings out here
stand in fragile pairs, aged couples parading slowly into oblivion.
Today, however, with the mist closed around them they assume immense
proportions. The pilings call to invisible kin -- to piers and monoliths,
a maze of them, from distant shores, distant times. They call to the
legendary drowned cities of Wales, the Cantre-r Gwaelod. Or even to
the fabulous land of Atlantis -- resurrected briefly just beyond my
sight. The pilings create a labyrinthine path that leads to ancient
temples or to a mermaid palace or to the minotaur.

Or perhaps the immensity I sense is just solitude. The emptiness of
silence. For no church bells of drowned towns resound here. The heron
stands frozen, neck arched, no movement ever.

The watch has stopped. And though I assume it is midday no motion exists,
no sun. In this encompassing mist I have stepped outside of time,
and into eternity. Now at last may be the time of the banquet, the
time of bread loaves warm and honeyed like the moon and of goblets
clear with starlight wine. It is the time of dancing, even if you
have never spun on your heels, the time of singing, even if you've
blushed away from the character of your voice.

At the heart of the banquet hall, is laughter and ripplings. The music
of the spheres twirls through silver jump ropes that are comets. Numerical
patterns shapeshift time-space into an elegant pavanne.

Here at the end of time I approach God with a list of questions, all
my wonderings since I was a child. I ask to tour the universe, visit
civilizations, know the life and death of stars, swim the microcosms
of the sea and body. I will witness the birth of time, touch each
unwrapping of its origami folds. I will listen to the harmonic resonance
of the new universe, and transcribe its emergent symphony.

All the creatures microbial to leviathan squiggling, changing, exploring,
stretching or stalking into their places -- I will come to know them,
for I am their cousin. And I will introduce myself to my own ancestors
and to my descendents, that generation to this, that to next -- that
colorful braid of great-greats. I will understand all the languages
that we have ever spoken, that we will ever speak.

And God -- I'm sure she will laugh. She'll catch me in her arms, in the
cool warmth of sea. Eternity is here, in a single moment, in a droplet
of mist, the soft fur of bark, the wriggle of soil, and a speck of
star. Wear this moment, wrap yourself in its lacework, and all of
the languages of now-then will be yours.

She  leads me back to this beach. The wall of mist curls along
my arms and between my toes. I shiver at the sparkle of her breath -- the
breath of heaven in my own lungs. And I step forward onto ten
thousand tiny existences at the edge of infinity. Eternity erases
all edges, sea-sky-sand, time-process-mind. The universe washes forward,
sea to me. We breathe into being.
 

end