TRUE BELIEVERS

Every once in a while, particularly when the weather is nice - like now - we up here on the mountain are visited by clusters of well-dressed folks of vacuous sincerity who come out from the city to walk in their high heels over my raised beds so they can get their spoken routine within earshot and interrupt my labors to hand me some brightly colored tracts outlining God’s plan for humanity and that includes me, their eyes say, as though it were a gift or at least a revelation, but I politely refuse the tracts and after pointing out God’s own asparagus on which they are treading I attempt to talk to them frankly as one being to another but it is always impossible, for true believers are limited in hearing and no longer command certain fields of thought.

Nevertheless I tell them I do not need a middleman to maintain my relations with higherness, nor do I need the conflicting words of God's many secretaries - whose descendants have been killing each other ever since - that anytime I see a sprout rise up out of the ground, hold in my hand a tiny plant with its roots shining, smell the crown of a baby's head, take a deep breath of the scent of lilac, watch a hawk ride the wind, see the stars circle the night sky or behold any other of a thousand daily miracles, I have no doubt that I am as much heaven as earth, as much now as eternity, that I therefore know lowness as well as I know highness, yesterday as well as forever, for I am those aspects embodied, I carry them within me in every cell and heartbeat, indeed as these visitors themselves do; but by then they have drifted off to trample other gardens, leaving me in the ancient company of seeds...