Barefoot in Autumn

 Barefoot in Autumn

(“The prince of Yahweh’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place on which you stand is holy.’ Joshua did so.” Joshua 5:15)

Walking barefoot on the early autumn dew
and the ground gave slightly between his toes.
There was a place within that was as bare as the
fading grasses as the days shrunk a little each hour.
There was power, there were flexible moments,
there was thunder, there was cotton candy snow.
The sun was bright and never obscured, the stars
burned right where they had been appointed eons ago.
He wasn’t sure if angels attended his devotion,
or if God walked the same short path that day.
He just knew nothing should come between his unshod feet
and a few square yards of pure creation. Although he did cry
to think
of all the consumables that, tossed out of every home, now
in microscopic detail permeated each place he stepped.
He heard no voices, but did think a song would be appropriate.
He waited for the birds to begin, the robins and doves that
shared a tree just over his head. They were busy collecting berries
for their brood and paid him little attention. Some of the birds
hung upside down on the branches just to reach the diminutive berries.

He had fasted before, hoping the holy would fill the
empty places. He was not wrong. But the visions were drab,
dull green and gray. He prayed until his eyes stung; He knelt
and asked the same thing each time. His failures always were
the first order of business. The dissonance between what he believed
and what he could never control; he could write a book, but then
everyone would know he wasn’t who he hoped to be.

But that day, standing in the chilly autumn with his feet
naked and flush against the ground, he thought he heard
the silence speak. What was the language? What dialect?
Could the thoughts that came to his mind also be the thoughts
of god? Could his heart beat truer while the cold earth
seeped between his toes? He would go back inside,
pour a cup of tea, and finish reading about the climate crisis.
He would do all he could do and bottled the moment as an
elixir to fix his backlog of failures and his fresh open-mouthed
questions about sanity and sanctity.

The air was warm just inside his front door.