Lark Descending

I am walking the grassy swell of a gentle valley. All around the air stirs with the promise of new life.

Strung along the edge of fields, trees eager for spring have already shed the grey veil of winter and put on their sheer new pelts in gauzed green, pale plum and old gold. The sun, still low in the sky, crowns the tops of their branches and casts etchings of their tracery on the waking earth.

Above, the sky is thin and translucent, clear as water straight from the spring. And there you are in the midst of all that silent spacious clarity.

A lark ascending.

Your song irrepressible and seamless, seemingly held aloft by breath so fine, it threads the notes through a single weave. The stream of your sound fills the still clear sky within me. And for a moment that feels like eternity, I am transfigured.

Then suddenly. Out of thin air. Out of the sky’s embrace.

You fall.

Straight down.

Plummeting as though your tiny feathered body were made of lead. Your plumb line drop like a fireman’s pole, opening a path between two worlds.

Still your song sounds. Its searching brightness rising now from the wintered grass, hidden from my gaze. Unflustered. Uninjured. Unceasing.

A lark descending.

Irresistibly drawn all ways towards god. Reminding me that soul sings on earth as it does in heaven.