Small fish, the great whale and a ladybird

There are so many flavours of love. There is river pebble soft love, new green grass love, autumn leaves dying love. There is passion, there is persistence, there is wonder. Devotion and tenderness and rough-skinned back slapping love. There is the kind of love that quietly sees concealed wonders, the watcher hiding in plain sight at the breakfast table, secretly wrapping himself in ecstasy. There is jump up slap you in the face love and love that is so subtle it can barely be felt. Long distance love that can only be seen from the top of a human mountain, gazing back at what has been, deciphering the runes of our lives and finally being able to read the whole page, discovering that it was a love story all along despite the blooded knees, tears and splinters. There is seagull swooping, deer leaping, lion roaring, whale turning, mouse squeaking love. Dancers whirling, cellos thrumming, flutes reaching, voices soaring. The love list goes on and on – like the background story at the beginning of star wars - disappearing into infinity it is of course endless..

The very essence of love though I do not know how to write about. It cannot be caught or tamed. It runs wild and will never submit to a harness of words. Beyond art, beyond music. The arching reach of that love has inspired cathedrals and symphonies and countless books. We have never even come close to holding it. When we try to close our hands upon it is gone, not only through our fingers but into our fingers, becoming our fingers and the one that causes the fingers to move. Forever hidden and always in plain sight. The source of love, the cause of love. That which moves in the space between the everything and the one that I am in the silence. That which makes the subtle form of a unique soul and which makes me one with the great turning wave of life that holds planets and stars and butterflies and buffalos. She remains a mystery of course, for mystery is her nature. There are clues. The scent of that love is there as a new-born sleeps on a tired chest, it is in the sight of a wave breaking at the swan’s breast as she pushes through still water painted gold by the setting sun. I hear it whisper in the spaces between the threading branches and sense its vastness in the silent ocean depths within, where I quietly wait before I am given a new breath. No matter how we reach it is always beyond. No matter how deep the longing it is always beyond. No matter the depth of devotion it is beyond. Forever beyond and at play in the most intimate spaces of my heart. I can only give thanks and as I cast my net of human passion and pain, soaring love and aching grief I hope to catch a few small fish and bring them home, all the while knowing that somewhere out there swims the great and silent whale of light in an ocean of stars, darkness and stories.