Suddenly An Ocean

She looked at him quietly a moment then turned her head away again. In that moment, though, he found he felt nearly dizzy with feelings flooding so rapidly through him. It was like he'd been walking through a great forest, thinking there was only forest in all directions, when suddenly he'd cleared a line of trees and found himself on a bluff above a great ocean. There was no choice but to simply stop, to breathe if one could manage, and adjust oneself to the fact of it. No face had ever done that to him before. But, then, what he had seen was more than merely a face somehow. He felt as if he'd just looked into a pool where all the pain of the ages had gathered itself and he was pierced to his very core by the fact that such pain lay amidst such beauty. And because he was who he was, he was instantly awash in the meaning of the symbiosis between great pain and great beauty and everything in
his considerable soul rose up to meet it.

When he was able, he said very softly, "I'm sorry. I hadn't seen you were there. I didn't mean to...."

But he paused again because she turned her face back. This time, however, her eyes were closed. It was too late, though, because even through her lids he could see the pools that lay behind them. She was exquisite in her sorrow, like Mary on Golgotha, and in an unconscious gesture his hand came up to cover his heart. All that still ached inside of him flowed toward her, knew it was a part of her nameless sorrow in that ungraspable wholeness of ageless pain. A mental image formed for him of two clear puddles on dark pavement and the one that he was ventured so close to the other that in that attraction of water molecules, a path snapped open and the one became joined with the other. He blinked, sucked in a great lungful of air, and let it out in small, ragged gasps.

It was obvious she had thought she was alone and even in the lines of her quiet face, he could see she was gathering herself to meet his interruption of her private grief. He marveled, though, that she, not knowing his response, yet allowed him the grace of watching her gathering. He stood, waiting, the thought of leaving not crossing his mind. He could not have left even if it had.

The smell of the greenhouse came to him again as he stood there silently, that distinct scent of wet soil mingled with the meshed fragrances of multitudes of flowers. Paradise would smell like this, he knew. This was the scent of life and, therefore, it must smell like this. And somehow even the grief of the woman in front of him was a part of that, was the grief of a tree fallen to the forest floor, becoming once again a substance that would give forth, in its time, new life. She belonged here, in this place, this woman did. He belonged there, too, and almost more than anything it was his awareness they shared that which kept him in his place.

All this passed through him and she had yet to say a word.