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The snow falling around the man in the naked woods is like the ash of heaven, ash from the cool fire of God's mother-of-pearl, moon-stately heart. Sympathetic but not merciful. His strictness parses us. The discomfort of living this way without birds, among maples without leaves, makes death and the world visible. Not the harshness, but the way this world can be known by pushing against it. And feeling something pushing back. The whiteness of the winter married to this river makes the water look black. The water actually is the color of giant mirrors set along the marble corridors of the spirit, the mirrors empty of everything. The man is doing the year's accounts. Finding the balance, trying to estimate how much he has been translated. For it does translate him, well or poorly. As the woods are translated by the seasons. He is searching for a base line of the Lord. He searches like the blind man going forward with a hand stretched out in front. As the truck driver ice-fishing on the big pond tries to learn from his line what is down there. The man attends to any signal that might announce Jesus. He hopes for even the faintest evidence, the presence of the Lord's least abundance. He measures with tenderness, afraid to find a heart more classical than ripe. Hoping for honey, for love's alembic. |
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