thispresentsojourn

[DISCLAIMER: For the protection of our neighborhood's residents and residence, the number in the title above is not relative to the actual address at which the characters depicted herein make home.]

From what I can tell, the woman across the street occupies her nine-hundred square feet in solitude with five identical dogs. For no one sake other than assumption’s, I’ve assumed she’s a widow, and that by the absence of a spouse she has been donated a somewhat melancholic grid through which to interpret reality. And in the arch in her back I see her life is one lived in a duality of resilience and grief.

She rarely makes herself known to the neighborhood, but on some rare occasion she’ll plod down her front steps, slamming the door behind her, and allow her dogs an opportunity to relieve themselves. Unlike the majority of my neighbors who’ll take their pets for a stroll down the street, this tired old woman refuses to loose them from her lawn. I watch it unfold through the foliage past my front steps.

Her eyes are of a stunning silver consistency, and they dig far back into her skull, and from there they throb and they flicker and scud about the lawn where her loyal companions toil. Still, her watchfulness displays a steady precision, and if even only from my brief moments of clandestine observation, I feel fit to conclude that behind her has coagulated the many years’ experience responsible for the master shepherd she now is.

I’ve witnessed this very event on multiple occasions, and no time is not identical to the one before. Though she typically keeps in her flock relatively close, she’s no dictator, and anyway, I imagine that sort of treatment might not translate too well in sustaining these close relationships. Even so, she is wisely aware that discipline remains essential to the maintenance of community, and although she manages it without a rod or a staff, I rarely notice a stray from the pack.

Of course, there is one of the rebellious ilk [when isn't there?], and when the antagonist does slip shrewdly from the understood boundaries, the woman’s voice takes shape in the only word I’ve ever known to spill from her lips. And I’m nearly sure my friends in Oklahoma can feel the thunder.

“LESTUHRRR!”

Her vibrato is mighty and vigorous, and at the volume it boasts I became confused as to why the clouds weren’t splitting or why no trees were uprooted. Still, somehow in the booming parade, I’m able to detect her sincere concern and love for the creature. After a wimper or three, the bandit dolefully retreats back to the center of the community.

After each pup has taken care of things, the widow turns from the street and in towards her porch – the pack closely behind – and back into the silence effervescing about her Ellsworthian home. When her glossy red door gently shuts into its matching wood frame, I wonder how the Passover blood might be visible on its already crimson post and lintel. And I can not avoid wondering whether she knows – or even knows of - the One slain, but risen, who was and is and came and comes and is coming, all with a purpose to make all things right and all things new.

YHWH!
YHWH!

Still we’re waiting
for the Dawn.