I am thankful for the luna moth and its trilling wing

“The luna moth, who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a musical notation. Have you noticed?”

~Mary Oliver, “Musical Notation: I”

Luna. The half-full moon cradles light in her body like a secret that cools and burns. We walk the dirt roads together, maybe 10 or 12 of us, drenched in the moon’s silver. There are no street lights here, and the night is bright-cold. From any one point we see horizon and mountains stretched against the canvas of a cloudless sky.

“Nothing real is ever lost or missing.” These are the words of Jesus from Glenda Green’s Love Without End, and they ring in my ears now. It’s over a year now since I left off writing this essay, a year and a half since the accident. For such a long time, I have eaten grief. I have wandered in a dry desert edged with thorns. I have called out for help, and no one came. I have dreamed myself alone.

Yet here I am now, walking through a desert at night—and it’s made of stars, it’s made of glittering velvet. The desert is brimming with moonlight and the faces of the people that I love. Even though they never came for me, I see how much I love them. How could I expect anyone to come, when I could not come for my own self?

We just finished eating together, a plate-piled Thanksgiving dinner. I realized we never stopped and said what we’re thankful for—but then, I guess we didn’t have to. Isn’t it obvious?

I’m thankful for the luna moth and her trilling wing.

I’m grateful for the faces of the people around me—people as thirsty as I am, willing to go even to the ends of the earth in search of water.

It is my job to collect the fallen feather as it lays across the dewy grass. My work to pick up reddening leaves, to notice the trees that they came from and see if I can name them, and then call to them from my heart in a secret language, as my brothers and sisters. There is music in the smallest things, and I am bound to notice it.

“Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Now is when I abandon death and dreams for the magic of what is given to me.

Because I could not stop for death/She kindly stopped...

Okay--truthfully?

Maybe the best part about almost dying is not getting a new car, last post aside.

It's the coming back to life part.

This is a slow process that I'm speaking of, gradual, like falling in love with someone shy. It may take years, even. I tangle with death as I sleep through yet another day, in bed with no visitors. I sigh, forlorn, looking out the window at the sun as it falls across the spruce trees. I wrestle with the shell of my former life, now empty of all of the places I used to go, people I used to see, things I used to fill it up with in the name of keeping busy.

What is left?

Freedom. Like making it onto the plane just before they close the cabin doors. Like getting the heck out of dodge.

Maybe I exaggerate a little about the almost dying part; some would say no, but who could tell really? Maybe I wasn't actually that close to what Mary Oliver calls "the cloud-boat" in that moment when my car was hit. No doubt, though--I was living, before the accident, under death's thumb day by day, wasting away.

If something good comes from tragedy

I get a shiny new car. Not brand new, but new to me.

My head is still spinning, I am extremely exhausted, and I feel like I’m going to puke or pass out, maybe both. But still, there is this Subaru Impreza before me, pulsing and gleaming in the July heat the way no car has ever done before. I imagine I know what a 16-year-old boy with a new sports car must feel like. Here she is, perfect and dentless and royal blue, only very gently worn. My body fits her seats like favorite clothes. Her engine doesn’t rev, it laughs.

Rose. I shall call her Rose, The Blue Flame.

Rose and I shall venture now, off into a new life.

Approaching

Now we have come to the stars.

Beside me, Jenarden speaks of a solar electric system in Hooper that runs on 800 million watts.

Huh?

But I make no effort to ask him.

Instead, my mind is drifting out. Past the solar electricity, past the solar system. I am hushed and dazzled by dark, where stars surface around us the way divers rise. I'm in a jar of night stirred through with diamonds. I am plugged in to eternity.

Scorpio climbs on the right.

Everyone says this when they come to Crestone: "I never knew there were so many stars." I would add, "or so much beauty in this world."

Riding

Curves of empty highway wend through the silk of dusk. We pass an antelope grazing on the right, and I think of the elk we saw earlier. With the next curve, the silver of water lays across the basin below us the way ribbons blow across a woman's hair. The Rockies, the San Juans, the Sangre de Cristos--peak follows peak on every side. We are wrapped in mountains.

In the front seat, Shivdhun is eating popcorn. He bought a 24" bag where a tall, skinny cowboy blasts his pistol at the zigzag opening of the paper. Just inside the cowboy's lasso, the words: "Texas-sized popcorn." Barbara asks Shivdhun, "Is your arm long enough to make it to the bottom of that bag?"

We passed the Dinky Dairy just a few miles back.

In a few hours, we'll be in Crestone.