from a blanket made of heaven

I watched the leaves cartwheel today, and they remain in my mind as magnificent Polaroids of light and shadow interrupted by color. Tumbling, spinning, whirling, and twisting: forlorn, bent, biomorphic shapes propelled by an unseen wind. They frolicked amidst the grass like carefree spirits...my ears could almost hear their jubilant laughter. Over the hill in leaps and bounds -- as the wind shifted -- they came, cascading down in crackling, delight-filled praise. Caught up in the moment, they flew by me, sweeping up and away, whispering poignant secrets of eternity between shafts of light and air, the words caught only by those still enough to hear them. Try as I might, I could not make out their tinkling discourse, and so their secrets remain an enigma still to the world. Cousins and aunts and uncles--perhaps intoxicated on passions otherworldly, like vivacity and love--collided with my face, leaving not a trace of their presence in their wake. Others of their kin frisked my bare feet, like sea foam on the sand, coaxing my eyes into twinkling, my lips into smiling.

And the trees...they stood rigid with lifted arms, wide and gaping, crooked, gnarled fingers stretching for the heavens with every sappy, barky pore of their being. I saw a complex wanting for God: a lusting for, a yearning for, a ceaseless searching that my mortal mind could not grasp, even with the most delicate, wispy threads of understanding. But "Hallelujah," they sang, "hallelujah, hallelujah!!, Your love makes me sing!", throwing up their hands in reckless abandon, all for the Creator of the depthless blue sky above.

And so I joined them.