Sorrow is part of the earth’s great cycles, flowing into the night like cool air sinking down a river course. To feel sorrow is to float on the pulse of the earth, the surge from living to dying, from coming into being to ceasing to exist. Maybe this is why the earth has the power over time to wash sorrow into a deeper pool, cold and shadowed. And maybe this is why, even though sorrow never disappears, it can make a deeper connection to the currents of life and so connect, somehow, to sources of wonder and solace.

~

In this stream, there is no drift from “ashes to ashes.” It’s all rushing water and what water carries, immortal substance careening from egg to crow to moss to smolt to gull-cry. Not dust or ashes, but cold hard rain and the smell of moldering cedars, where small scurrying things rush death back into life. I can see it happening. Unexpectedly released, the material of life can hardly wait to shoulder its way back into something that swims upstream, or hones a knife blade, or pecks at bones between its toes.

~

The moon pours light on the clouds below us. Pale colors play over their surface, flowing from pink and blue to lavender, like dawn on a northern sea. There is a wash of purple, and blue lenses sliding to rose on the slow swell of the clouds. I don’t know the color of love’s pure light, but it can’t be any more beautiful than this.

We watch this unaccountable aurora until we’re too cold to stand still. As we descend into the fog, we feel our way, step by step. I don’t know any other way to move through darkness, but to put one foot ahead of the other and listen for the exact sound of our footsteps. If we have to drop to our knees sometimes and press the palms of our hands against the duff and damp of the earth, then that is what we will do.