A Finer Food

Only cicadas keep the night from total silence, calls from the hot earth through the blackness of the new moon. They sing a tune, an ancient song of continuity. The deepening silence and rhythm rock me back into one of those times when you slip though the barrier of “normal” into the magic of another time and place. When what is always there but not seen appears to us. When something in our brain slides over to let our awareness peer into the makings of a finer world. Not finer in better, though it may be thought so, but finer in a more delicate, softer, subtler sense.

It was here I one time found myself listening to the celestial sounds of the end of day. I was in the woods of an upstate New York town. Walking quietly with heart open when it felt like I moved through a doorway. In the fading light all things were coming alive in a way I’d never imagined possible. It was as if every creature, branch, twig, rock and all things present started to sing. Each one had a different song. It was subtle at first, but slowly came to a building of unique vibrations till a crescendo of heavenly voices all blended their song for me to bathe in. I stood transfixed by the experience. I felt like I was being fed a food far finer then any I had ever taken in. I drank and drank, inhaling the sounds in a way I can not describe. I don’t know how long I stood there. It was well after dark when the quiet had returned, when I must have slipped back through the doorway to the more familiar world. I walked back to the house wondering what that was. Realizing that my thoughts about it would never match the moment I decided to not think about it but just satiate in it, like the effects of a good meal. Deep appreciation settled into my bones. Just then I noticed the fireflies dancing in the dark.
Mary