Below the crest of the field to the south, keep walking until all the houses and their artificial light fall as lost to view as the road. At that spot slowly turn in a complete circle and nothing else but trees and grass will fill the eyes. Do this at the final flush of light from a vanished sun, and then hold your breath for a piece of time when all the traffic sounds and sights subside — no trucks brawling down the long straight shot grade from St. Peters, no jacked-up Mad Max dieseled pick-ups blowing up the back road, no contrails of jets climbing out of Philly — just quiet and a lavender-black sky. In that transient space it becomes possible to imagine this township empty of men and women and their machines, and that is when I tell myself a story of what it must have been like to have stood in this spot when the natural world felt so broad and deep that one could not imagine an end to it. As if ordered, that is when the great chevron of geese sweep above me heading southwest, shifting their V’s, making their great noise, that old, old, harkening sound as intimate as the tale you and I have just told. They pass out of sight but before their calls fade, they wheel back in a great turning northeast to south and come above us again so much closer. Heads up, we listen and look so intensely that we do not think. At this final darkest blue moment, in this narrowed space in an obscure, unprofitable field, lifted up by their back-and-forth chorus and their fellowship, do you too not believe in an inherited grace we can redeem if we can but find our way?
