How Do You Know

Allowing The Mystery

How do you know what page to turn to in a new verse of poetry ? Why does the book open to a certain place, words become multi-dimensional, no longer flat black typeset - but inviting you into conversation. Or surprising you with a turn of phrase, that causes you to stop and consider -

What is...
The sound of red
The smell of snow
The taste of a tree
The sight of music
The touch of space 

How do you know, as you wind through the shelves in a bookstore what will beckon to you? You enter the space not quite knowing, but somehow hopeful, expectant. Fingering the bindings, a cover’s illustration entices or the touch of the pages - some textures so gossamer, the lightest breath rustles the pages onto the next - or bold fonts demand to be read. At first a sensory love leads you deeper into its lines - curiosity, quiet glimpses, gently turning into fascination. You take this home.

Or how you look up, at just the right moment in the day’s final bow, to see a blaze of light - streaming off that bleak point of land. How the late Winter sun ignites the charcoal strokes of barren trees. A quick and smothering twilight dashes the fire but later that night just before you sleep the light returns - a flash of gratitude for the given day.

Or to take a walk some sullen February day - why, when the draw of the home fire entices you to stay - to hear the courting flirtations of a Tit Mouse - the first sign of Spring in New England. While back at home, the snow slides off the roof, the icicles refuse to release their grip - shards taunting you to walk beneath them. That Tit Mouse, perhaps a little too early, but a harbinger for your Spring no matter the Winter trauma.

How do you know, one day, in the Humane Society that yes, that cat and I belong together - the exchange of looks - a paw reaching out. Already the cat returned by others a few times. Don’t go…pick me. Why? A certain dog, trouble for sure, that will test your patience, make you wonder what were you thinking? Can I, should I bring him back? No, no...there’s too much at stake for both of you.

How do you know a chance meeting of strangers in a college dorm will end up in friendships spanning 50 plus years ? The interplay of succeeding years in marriages, moves, children, disagreements, sickness, death, partings - the reunions that remind you that all time seems irrelevant - we live with each other, we witness each other’s lives - we remain intact.

And yet,

These moments are immortal, and most transitory of all; no content may be secured from them…Beams of their power stream into the ordered world and dissolve it again and again. 
Martin Buber

So, why mangle the rhyme and rhythm of eternity’s verse with “how?” Why disturb the dance of parallel lines that, more often than we observe, intersect and break the expected pattern of our days. For all the questions seeking an explanation, let them all go, let the wonder of not knowing “how” fill your days and nights. Witness the world dissolving again and again. Because to not know how, in all the universes, we come to be here - this is the sound of Spring in Winter.