Wild roses are out.
The colors flash out my window, like they did when I was young and I wanted to know what each species was. Its name. What is your name! When I was thirteen, biking through my thirsty summers, I wanted to pluck off blossoms, press them in a book, and mispronounce Latin.
In my car, I pull over suddenly, kicking up dust. Now, twenty years later, I want to see. I want to see! And now, at last, I am alone in the driver’s seat.
The grass rises up to my knees, and the hill is steep. I step, pioneer-like, into unknown territory. The water has flowed down from the mountains in canals engineered by my ancestors. It has filled up the bottom of the coulees.
Behold!
“I know thee now.” Your names, I mean. The knowledge has kicked in finally, and it kicked me in my head, too. Sticky geraniums, lupins, sage, chicory, carpet phlox, blanket flower.
The sky opens itself up wide to God. It comforts me here. I belong. There are blackbirds, too. Some with yellow heads. Others with red on their wings. They warble and rasp their song at everything. At the world. At blue skies. At me, their lanky intruder.
God is involved here. It helps me to know this, especially now. Even if I do not know if He is involved in my life right now---the horrible tangled messy web I live in---I know he exists out here, miles away from my little room where I languish at a desk.
He is here. Under the sun, in the ripples of the water, in the buzz of the birds, in the sheen of a blackbird’s wing, and in the thorns of the wild rose.
