After the Fire, the Fire Still Burns

Friday morning before I knew Lynn had passed I saw a Hawk jump out of the woods ahead of me in Dooleyville. I then chased the attack on me bike(that's right me) and around the bend watched him perch up on this pole. Drop bike, get out camera, frame shot, enough light? Half dozen shots in seconds then I slowly moved closer knowing that the guy with the camera down below is theoretically off this killer's radar. Minutes pass, I watch in amazement that this bird pf prey is still hanging on to the landscape he was born to. More shots, move under a bit to get sky behind him. Then all of a sudden, a quiet but dense woooooooossshhhhhhhh from a few feet above and behind me over my head and into my front periphery. Another, his friend, mate or hunting partner? Amazing, left me with chills a bit when it actually played out right in front of me. They stayed for more passing minutes, quiet not a sound but yet something tacit was sent my way, something bigger than just explaining and or conveying, something not announced or worn on my sleeve like a shirt with a name.

Friday after noon the news came by phone from my mom that her cousin Lynn had died the night before at around about shortly after 7p. My maternal's side of the family is sort of small, she had no brothers or sisters growing up but she did have a couple of cousins and a best friend in one who I want to call Aunt Lynn because that is how I knew her. Strangely enough that title is actually an upgrade from 2nd or 3rd cousin which is prolly the socially excepted technical relationship that she was to me and in this day and age is saying something to go up the ladder as opposed to like a brother or sister becoming a cousin. Sparing the details that do not really make sense anyway, she was admitted to the hospital a week before she died with some stomach pains that may or may not have been related to another medical challenge she had been dealing with. Within no time she was unconscious twice not once and then she died peacefully Thursday night with my mom and 2 other close relatives at her side. After a few minutes with her at rest they were asked to leave the room so that the medical staff could remove the incubation tube that had been helping Lynn with her shallow respiratory. When my mom was allowed back in she said that Lynn appeared to be smiling. Of Course, a body at peaceful rest, an exiting soul directly facing the light transfer of God and all that is safe.

Friday evening in twilight I lit an open fire way in the out back under the Hemlock and the biggest Broccoli Oak in Dooleyville. It was big, a tee pee inferno that started with the past 5 months of limb fall in the yard, the fire was 6 feet at the base and soon raged to 3 feet over my head. When the limbs fell in on themselves I started a staggered stack of thick pine logs that I had been collecting since spring. I sat out there until well after dark tending to the flame and watching the smoke rise into the sky contacting the air as it rose. My kid and the neighbor ones played around the stone lined pit, dancing, lighting sticks, singing and listening to me babble about transfer of spirit from earth to sky and the infinite cosmos. It was a wonderful experience to observe the elementary warmth of the fire and what it brought me and before 11, I was asleep. The next morning Saturday sometime after a brew of coffee was in my hand I went out to the pit and could feel the warmth still so I placed one log in the center of the pit. I crouched down and exhaled a deep breath onto the log. A flame immediately lurched up a foot tall and made me pause in the morning light. I kept it going all day by simply checking on it every few hours and sometime around dusk, the last of the smoke touched the sky and I let it be.

Lynn's funeral is up north today and I will not be there but I am having real feelings none the less. Mom, Dad, Sis and fam, I am thinking about you today as I have been for awhile. Love, Peace and Honesty.