Sacred Ground

         The grass is perfect. It forms a vista which I thoroughly enjoy and frequently describe as “beautiful”, as if “beautiful” could explain how I feel when I stand here. I breathe in, and marvel at how soft the breeze is when it brushes over my skin. It almost feels like fingertips. I turn my face into the gentle wind expectantly, but it has gone, leaving the leaves above me still.

         The shadows from the oak trees have stopped their dancing on the grass. They too lay still, creating definite patches of deep gray-green, contrasting perfectly with the places that sparkle new green in the sun. Again I marvel at the grass, and how in it’s simplicity it makes a picture more lovely than any I have ever seen on a gallery wall.

         The blades stand tall and manicured, and they look so crisp that with each step, I expect to hear them crack beneath my toes. They never crack though; instead, each blade molds to my foot, bending and accommodating the curve of my arch, only to spring skyward again as the ball of my foot rolls forward. It feels soft and soothing. I look down and wiggle my toes.

         Although the day is an easy eighty, the ground beneath the oak trees stays cool. In my younger days, I would sometimes imagine that this was because, as the grass there drank up the morning dew, it drank also of the chill of the night and could never quite be warm again. Even though I now know this is not the case, I still remember, and I hold onto that fancifulness of youth because it makes me laugh, and because it helps me feel the magic here. So that is why, as I take a few steps over the perfect grass, I imagine that it is the magic tickling my toes, and not a thousand blades of flawless green.

         When the breeze picks up again I raise my head and I take a sniff of the air, and in a rush, I am greeted by a potpourri of smells. I know for a fact that a person would have to devote an entire afternoon to just sitting and breathing if he ever wanted to separate the smell of the air into the scents that compose it. I did that once. I sat and I separated them, one by one, until I had named at least twenty. There are still some that I can’t identify.

         There is the smell of the wisteria, and honeysuckle that climb along the fence. There is the smell of new turned earth and clay. Those are detectable to anyone with a nose. It is the underlying scents that make this a place apart. The smell of week old roses. The smell of damp and molding artificial wreaths. The smell of time. Yes. Time has a smell. It is fainter than the smell of mold, but more noticeable than the smell of earthworms, and the smell of time is strongest in these places because it has no meaning here.

         I reach down and lay my offering beside a vase of faded, blue, plastic flowers decorated with a dirty lace bow. I am left to wonder how something so covered in dirt can be so beautiful, but it really does make a striking picture. I sigh contentedly and enjoy my visit with you. For although I cannot speak with you, I can do much more.

         I can stand in this place where heaven touches earth, and I can witness time and eternity meet in an embrace of stillness. I can watch life and death make contact, each holding the other hard, like lovers unwilling to let go in the morning. I can see things here that do not exist anywhere else. I can see love. I mean really see it. Love manifests as cold, gray granite and marble. It’s a shame that people do not realize the truth until they come here. Love is not soft. Not real love. It is steady, and sure, and written on stone. It can weather a storm and still clearly proclaim it’s truth. It never fails.

         Here, where death touches life, I can stand, and I can always see the truth. I stand in this place alone, but not lonely, and I can gaze on where you are, and are not, both at once. I am at the threshold. You at the door. Here on this sacred ground, we meet again, past and present the same. When I leave, you will leave with me. Yet somehow, you remain here.

         Some moments I think I understand everything, but like a glass overfilled, the knowledge pours out too soon. The feeling leaves me empty, but still I am sure. I am convinced that you are the chill in the grass. I know that you are the smell in the air I can never name. I am certain you are that odd feeling that comes over me at the strangest times. I feel you in the breeze that lifts my hair. But more than anything, I know beyond knowing, that you are what is sacred in this ground.

         It was good to visit you again today.