That night the yard was quiet,

quiet in a different way,

as if the whole world was slowing down, encouraging, listening, tossing out a secret and waiting for expectant fingers to unite it.

The moon lit up the yard,

illuminating encouragement from universal truth and exploring into darker, mental silence broken by shattered glass shards. 

There were echoes of days and long evenings past,

conversations that linger from thoughts and situations committed to memory, now I take on the role of the bringer.

Earlier that day the kids ran around the yard and we told stories about the others we once knew and the words still hung over the couch in the living room.

If the couch was blue it would look just like his,

the words we spoke should be hung on signs and then placed around the.house like portraits so that they would never disappear the way the warming sun on the grass sends the dew back to the sky. 

Some would be painted in the same shade of blue as his old couch, the one that held the memories we now told as stories punctuated by laughter and joy,

sometimes taken out and then put away, 

tucked into a safe spot like a comforting mental pouch. 

(still.come the memories, still their presence and they become the remedy.)

Then comes the sunrise, maybe into a foggy morning, a for that sits just above the grass waiting to be burned off by the sun and returned to the sky to become new clouds that will drift in the huge sky so that all of us leave behind all senses of mourning. 

Then,

every time it rains and the water soaks the earth,

those stories will echo the words spoken and then somewhere in the blue sky those echoes will surround this house and we will never forget the sunrise and it’s infinite worth.

T.S. Deary – P.A.F.M. 

In the morning the fog rises just above the grass covering the fences off portion of pasture out along 17 North.

The sun was peaking over the horizon, the day just beginjing, the quiet road inviting and steady, he everything was waking up, innocent and renewed.

(Approaching summer, the height of life, expressed along the broad horizon and the circle of life shown in the circling vultures out over the road.)

In the mountains the fog rose high above the trees,

like a blanket thrown over the top of Tecumseh as if its peak were a bed waiting for it to settle over its mass.

And now there are the veiks of foggy distance between her and I, she so beautiful and me remembering all that adolescent darkness and how it seems like it will never end.

Then there came the fog that descended over his mind, coming out of nowhere and without explanation, an unwilling participant in the drama and deep.darkness that followed.

Later on that day the fog had lifted and driving home the fenced in pasture was illuminated by the slanted rays of the late spring sun.

T.S. Deary – P.A.F.M.

Prelude

Today was a perfect Sunday, an Easter Sunday, the sun out up a perfect sky, a light wind through the trees.

I.

In the empty church,

(if you listened hard with an open heart.)

You could hear the echoes of ancient Psalms, bringing the wonder of the day alive.

“Do not look for the living among the dead.”

II.

Pastor’s sermon was full of words of hope, it’s flow and structure really showed his learning, when it was over we left to seek out the living.

The sun came through the windows as if the spirit had lit the room.

Then there was the last line of scripture…

The words left hung in the air as we left to be among the living.

III.

Later the children swam as the pool filled with water.

Water…

I remembered their christening day.

Water…

Born again of water and the spirit, children of God.

P.A.F.M.