hymn from the edge
Yayoi Kusama, the contemporary Japanese artist and creative genius, sings into my morning, “Seek a hymn of love for our souls.” The lines float over me from her poem “A Message from Yayoi Kusama to the Whole World,” an inspiration that arrives during a pandemic Zoom from Steff, a fellow writer in Sisters of the Pen, our intrepid writing group.
So I ask the horizon, where shall I seek “a hymn of love for our souls”? I consider the current purview of my life. Will it be in a miracle cure or a month of PRIDE? Will it be in the stories a Ugandan girl born into a system of chattel, her soul smothered under the weight of cows? Will it be in the unvaccinated millions beyond the reach of the elite health consumers of the naughty West? Will it be on the West Bank in the bagged bodies of Palestinian children bombed into early graves? Where shall that hymn of love be found?
The taste of bitter tea stings my tongue. Today the hymn of love eludes me. I don’t know where to look except in the next word that appears at the tap of my fingers.
Last night I dreamed I was on a forested mountainside. Boulders smoothed by eons of weather bubbled in clusters among old growth evergreens and aspens. Trail-less, I wandered with my dogs out to a mound of standing stones flanked by treetops that reached far from their roots to capture a serving of sun. My gaze cast itself toward the progressive waviness of an uneven landscape that seemed to go on forever. When had I first equated the horizon with beauty? Was it when I played in the sand on the beach at Lake Michigan, not able to comprehend the opposite shore? Was it on road trips with my family from the back seat where I was captive for hours staring at cornfields, deserts, or coastlines?
I held the dogs on their leashes, and the smallest one kept inching toward the edge, slipping over the side, dangling even. With urgency, I pulled her up to safety. “You can’t do that!” I kept saying. I had landed us in a spot with barely enough room to turn around. Stand was all we could do. Beyond the tuft of boulders and spires of trees, sheer cliffs surrounded us. How I had landed us here, I couldn’t explain. No direction offered a track back from where we had come. All I could do was maintain my position and do my best to protect us from harm. Better to keep my eyes toward gravity for now. The horizon could wait.
Perhaps the hymn of love need be found this instant right under my feet.
