little Annie & the redtail hawk

his steel wings, 

hard blades, sharp and black. 

he plunged straight to earth. 

screaming silently downward, 

he turned on his axis, 

then turned again. 

each rotation tight, crisp, 

impossible. 

his bullet dive, 

dark, sleek, and foreboding. 

he burned and tore the air. 

then, 

catastrophic collision inevitable, 

white feathers fluttered as 

he broke to the horizon, 

and floated over the hill, 

supper secure. 

It was a warm January Monday afternoon. The hills were decked out in their close-fitting new suit of green velvet. The grass was still short and snug against the contours of the land. Outcroppings of rock and oak and sage accentuated the smooth rolling hills here and there, marking the curves and hollows and slopes with their suddenness. A red tailed hawk drifted lazily in wide circles high over head.

He was walking the three mile running trail behind the software lab where he worked. The lunch-time joggers had done and showered and gone. Now the place was all alone with him. There would be no interruptions or intrusions to violate the solitude of his walk. He had come out to wrestle with God.

Wrestling with God. Why was it so difficult to know, or hear, or comprehend, or ignore, or simply dismiss this great being who seemed to be so present and so distant; so close and so remote? There had been simpler times when talking to God, hearing God, knowing God, had been much easier. Times when he had known far more clearly how the world was put together and how he belonged in it. Times when he had known enough to be confident and a bit brash. Times when he had known what it was to be right. But those times had passed. None of it held together nicely any more, and now he only knew that being alive was good, and that this God who was such a mystery to him was somehow still his friend. He was no longer interested in orthodoxy. The God of Everything had given him a walking trail among the hills with privacy and quiet and time. It was enough.

So he walked. And he talked to his God, and talked with his own heart, and listened and laughed and cried and sang to them both. As he made his way along the path through the hills, a quiet little person awoke within him; a person he had always known, a person he had always been, but never acknowledged; a person more feminine than he envisioned himself to be, but who was no threat to his masculinity. In fact, it seemed as he walked openly with this little one, that his maleness was somehow strengthened and nurtured; that he grew stronger and clearer with each step. And remarkably, the little one knew God far more clearly and intimately than his rational, controlling maleness could. He found that he could converse with her freely and know his presence in the world in a new way. His understanding began to take on a clarity not of logic, but of being present.

Suddenly the hawk tucked his wings into a tight fold and plummeted straight to earth. Just as suddenly, and with crisp precision, he rotated a quarter turn to the left, then a quarter turn left again. Still, his silent, screaming dive was unabated as he tore through the air like a bullet. How could he break free before crashing into the rock-strewn velvet of the hillside below? Then, miraculously,

as quickly as he had fallen from the sky, he was floating in a smooth slow glide over the edge of the hill. His dive had ended as abruptly and effortlessly as it had begun. Somehow, this remarkable event, so quick, so precise, so graceful and astonishing, spoke to him with the voice of God. He could not articulate the message clearly, but the little one within him knew its blessing and joy and present power. It was done. Now he could return to the silver towers and his office within, a gentle new power hiding inside him.

shimmerfire

down in shadows of the great dark wood 

her brooding mystery runs 

to the depth of languid black pools. 

fierce nurture, gentle terror. 

the delicate lace of her foliage 

erupts with the force 

of the Green Man’s passing 

and the still shimmer of his molten heat 

bakes and burnishes summer upon her hills. 

His first commissioned sculpture was a bronze. It was also a nude. It had been done twenty years ago, and he had long since lost track of it and it’s buyer. The buyer had requested a nude bronze likeness of herself for her husband’s birthday. She was well into her forties, and he in his seventies. She had said, “I want it to look like me, but you’ll have to use your imagination.”

He had never had a shortage of imagination, so he easily obliged her. There was no base beneath the figure. The piece was designed to sit on a ledge or shelf. She would have been about eighteen inches tall if standing, but she sat leaning slightly forward with her hands on the edge, and her legs dangling over. Her face and expression were a good representation of the subject, but were more concerned with the essence of her feminine charm and mature beauty than with photographic accuracy. How well he captured her form and the lines and detail of her body is, of course, left to your imagination.

The sculptor had not worked in any kind of metal before. His experience thus far had been in clay and wood and stone. By a remarkable stroke of providence, there was an art foundry less than three miles from where he lived, and he made his way there.

The proprietor was a foundryman; a weathered, leathery cowboy artist who made his way sand casting belt buckles for the leather craftsmen in the street fair trade. He might have been much younger, or much older than his features would suggest, but it was impossible to tell which. The foundryman claimed to know the lost wax method, and spoke authoritatively about the process they must use to successfully accomplish the piece. The sculptor was sufficiently impressed with his talk, and his skill with buckles, and sufficiently without better alternatives, so he hired the foundryman to cast his work. The only condition being that he be allowed to be present and part of each step in the process.

No work had been done on the sculpture when he first approached the foundryman. It was still a fluid idea in his mind. They discussed the technical aspects of the project, and he began to have a better understanding of the production issues and design factors that would be involved. Then he began the work, first in familiar clay. Then, under the skilled guidance of the foundryman, he learned to transfer the image to wax form, which he gave more detail and expressive energy.

As they worked together he gained full confidence in the craft of the foundryman. They added the gate, sprues, and risers; the system of ducting and venting that would allow the molten bronze to flow freely to every part of the figure. The foundryman patiently explained every point of theory and practice as they continued the work. His student absorbed it all, and most of his practice over the ensuing years was informed by this apprenticeship.

Finally the piece was ready and they put it into its encasement of refractory plaster and prepared it for the pour. When the plaster was dry to the touch several days later, they put it into a slow kiln to drive off the remaining vestiges of moisture, burn out the wax, and pre-heat the mold for the pour. The next morning was cold and foggy with a mystical northwest drama of spirit that the sculptor had grown to love and revere in Seattle in the Fall. It had always reminded him of Celts and Druids and mysteries of fertile earth and untamed wilderness. Untamed even though in the heart of the city. No other city he had ever been in could boast this

extraordinary phenomenon. The primitive ancient energy of earth and rampant vegetation and damp wilderness would not give in to the onslaught of progress in this place, and he lived and worked and played in it with awe and reverence. It was only fitting that the damp mist should shroud the foundry yard as they prepared for this ancient bronze-age ritual.

The foundryman had come early to fire up the blast furnace. It was loaded with a crucible of bronze and covered to retain the heat against the damp chill. Fire roared out of the two inch vent in the lid. The foundryman greeted the sculptor distractedly, continuing to work, opening the kiln, which had been shut down for hours to allow the mold to cool somewhat. They worked together to set the still hot mold in position for the pour. The furnace roared with gas flames white hot and swirling furiously. The foundryman removed the lid revealing an outrage of heat and light and fury all glowing and broiling out of the mouth of the furnace. He checked the temperature of his little pot of hell and deemed it suitable for the transforming task at hand. He shut down the furnace and skimmed the slag from the surface of the bronze with a pine board. The board flared up instantly and burning intensely as it touched the metal, but somehow it seemed well suited to the task and cleaned the surface of the molten metal to a smooth clear mirror.

The sculptor was unprepared for the profound mystery of what he would experience in the dim twilight of that early morning as he looked down into the crucible of bronze. It was a shimmering radiance like nothing he had ever seen. The metal was a liquid mirror, rippling and wet and hot and glowing full of light. The damp cold and shrouding mystical fog yielded to its fierce energy of light and power and sheer intensity of being. And yet the bronze did no harm to the brooding spirits of the mist and the lush vegetable growth of the hillside. They were brother and sisters. Utterly different and unlike each other, and yet perfectly matched and melded and merged in energy and balance.

Foundryman and sculptor worked together to pour the shimmer-hot liquid into the mouth of the mold, pouring steadily until the

glowing liquid rose to the tops of all the riser ports indicating that the pour was complete. Now it was done but for the cooling and cleaning. They would chip away the mold investment, chisel and grind the gating away, then chase and sand blast and patina and buff the surface to get the desired effects in the bronze.

As the pour was completed and the bronze cooled, the secrets of place and craft softened and settled quietly into the metal. The buyer would not know what magic and mystery of fire and mist and fertile pregnant earth lay hidden and waiting in the heart of the little figure who sat smiling from a bookshelf at her husband each day.

three

for a fleeting moment 

her words were suspended. 

time stopped cold. 

he was caught in her sparkling grey eyes. 

and then she paused imperceptibly, 

herself captured by her own radiant snare. 

for a fleeting moment 

her words were suspended. 

time stopped cold. 

they both were caught in the delicate web of her spell. 

and then, as a flash of light, they went on, 

he, engrossed in her tale, and she in the telling.

but just for a moment her words were suspended. 

and time stopped cold. 

He had once read that every meaningful, intimate relationship was a triangle; that sharing the relationship with its two primary parties was a third person. This third person was the relationship itself. This third person was in fact, the dominant party, determining the direction and intensity and character of what transpired between the other two. Now he found this third person alive and vibrant in his life. The third person was born quietly, within a strong spiritual bond that formed rapidly and grew steadily. Neither he nor she had a clear sense of the direction or potential of the relationship at first. Neither had a clear sense of the intentions or interest level of the other. But both persisted and nurtured the thing growing between them. Each found it inspiring and stimulating and comfortable and very good. 

Openness was a hallmark of their interaction and discourse. She had been engaged in a deep and extensive personal transformation for several years, leading to, and following her divorce some three years before they met. In some ways, she was far along the path that he had just begun. He found it instructive and encouraging to draw from her insights into the transformation of faith he was experiencing. She too was captivated with the dismantling and reconstruction that was taking place within him, and found resonance there with her own experiences.

The relationship had captured them both powerfully, and drew them onward in concert with its own objectives, which at deep levels coincided with and blended the needs and wishes and desires within each of them. This integration was remarkable and powerful, and far bigger than the wishes or intentions of either one of them. Neither of them could effectively steer and control it. It seemed to have an irresistible life of its own, which would not be denied or manipulated or controlled by their individual perceptions and wishes. The relationship progressed at its own stately, disciplined pace, seemingly intent on protecting them from themselves and each other, preserving and strengthening itself and each of them, and moving toward its own fullness, without concern for how limited their understanding of that fullness might be in the intervening process.

This third person in the triangle was the youngest of the three, born only months ago, yet inheriting and merging the wisdom and knowledge and experience and wishes and passions of both of them. Out of that blending came a maturity, strength, and power neither possessed alone.

lashed to the mast

poor brave Odysseus! 

how could he possibly know 

the loyal crew 

who lashed him faithfully to the mast 

would stop her ears 

and sing her sweet siren song 

not from jagged rocks 

on the distant shore, 

but from the bow and fore decks 

of his own sturdy craft. 

One of the most remarkable things about the moon’s little sister was her incredible musical power. Several times she had sung along with a popular performer on radio or CD for a moment or two in his presence. His heart melted in utter astonishment at the intensity and power and clarity and versatility of her voice. She seemed to overpower the recorded performance and capture the song for her own. It was as if the recording were a knock-off copy of her performance. He often wished that she would sing to him, and yet there had never been a convenient time or way to express this desire. It was a desire that he had never experienced before. Music had always been an important and powerful force in his life, but he had never been so wholly disarmed and smitten as he was when she sang. He had never connected at such a primal level to the heart of one so gifted.

He sometimes wondered if ever he would dare to ask her to sing to him. It was so personal and intoxicating when he had experienced it that he was awestruck and held captive in some mysterious way he did not understand. Someday, lashed to the mast, he would sail into the jaws of this sweet torment.

little sister of the moon

at the lacy silhouette 

of pine and birch under moon, 

I tremble with anticipation. 

the sweet mistress of the wood knows my coming, 

and her mysteries are dark and brooding, 

her treasures guarded. 

He had spent nearly seven years fighting for his marriage. It had been a hard and hopeless struggle born in love and carried out first in faith and later, in dogged commitment. Finally the love, the faith, the commitment had all collapsed in a heap, and the marriage of nearly 26 years ground to a halt, its empty shell half buried in the dust of its long drought. The years had drained him of most of the intense painful emotions that his friends promised would overtake him as the separation and divorce became reality. Most did not realize the extent to which he had battled with these emotions and horrors for all the long hard years. Now, as the struggle ended, there were few remnants of sorrow and pain left to engage. He was simply relieved and free.

Then one day he met the little sister of the moon. She was a little taller than him and a few years younger. She had a charm and engaging presence that entirely captivated his heart. She was insightful and rich and restful in the way that mature women are, yet playful and irreverent and restless with a youth that he knew was immune to time. She shared the frustrations and wounding that he had sensed in other women, yet she seemed to have a grace and deep joy that transcended these sorrows. She was balanced and strong, yet vulnerable. He loved her at first sight and loved her more with the passing of time.

One of the most striking things about her was her remarkable intuitive intelligence. It was so incisive, so delicate, so feminine. He sensed that she was far beyond him in her perceptive skills and ability to read and understand and empathically touch the people she encountered. He felt transparent before her. This would have been unnerving and intrusive but for her equal measure of caring and tenderness toward him. He never felt at risk with her, and found himself sharing freely with her from the deepest secret places. Even when he was not confident of how she would respond to the things he told her, he never feared for his safety in revealing them, and was compelled to do so by her openness.

Each of them brought different strengths to their friendship; his quiet masculine world-conquering calm; her fiery nurturing feminine wholeness. And out of these strengths, they forged a friendship that transcended each of their weaknesses and gave strength and wisdom and steadiness to both.

All this transpired in the absence of physical intimacy. It was perhaps this abstinence that permitted their friendship to grow into places and depths he had not previously experienced. In the early stages, he had assumed that physical intimacy would eventually make its way into the relationship as he gained a respectable and healthy distance from his divorce. He had never been this close in a relationship without physical intimacy, and had no sense of such intensity apart from it. As time passed; as they talked freely about this and other secret things, he began to wonder what would happen to them if they ever crossed that threshold. He was not entirely sure that he could successfully make the transition, even though it seemed to him to be a natural possibility. He had so much to learn about the nature of woman, and of intimacy. And sexuality had always been goal oriented; a shortcut to intimacy. Would a physical engagement interfere with the purposeful stately growth and flowering of this sacred friendship?

The answer to this question was not forthcoming, but in due time it would take care of itself one way or another, and whatever it was, the answer would be right and good. He had not always felt so confident of this. In the early stages, he didn’t fully understand the ways that physical intimacy can prematurely short-circuit the blossoming of a truly deep and profound relationship. He had seen it as inevitable that such a full and powerful relationship eventually must turn physical or die. She had seen through his blind spot, and persisted in her remarkable charm and wisdom and strength while he weathered the storm in his heart. She would not acknowledge or deny the possibility of physical intimacy, and yet engaged him at every other level of which he was conscious. She fully understood the implications, and patiently, faithful to her understanding and conviction, taught him this fuller, deeper way.

And so she began to enlighten his quest for the nature of woman. She seemed called to the task. And she was truly the little sister of the moon. So rich in understanding, so radiant in beauty, so timeless in wisdom, so powerful in rhythm, so musical of heart. She was soft warm brilliance rising out of quiet cool darkness, and joy stirred at each shimmering passage of her silver imminence through his dark sky.

moonshot

moon floats high 

in radiant darkness. 

still night peace, 

her gentle glow. 

suddenly, an omen of great portent!

cupid's tiny silver arrow 

slicing upward 

through the heart of Moon. 

and now, his backlit con-trail 

adorns Moon's shimmering grace 

and drags her back into the east. 

It had been a day full of challenge and work and hard struggle. A day when he wrestled with the newness of his life and the failure of his strength, and the uncertainty of his emotional survival and the wonder of his new-found capacity for uncomplicated love. A day when he felt exhilarated and distressed and full of energy and weary and tired, and all these things had come tumbling one on another so fast and so rich and full that he would have marveled at them now if he weren’t so tired.

One of the issues of the day had been his ongoing wrestling match with God. For months now, he had been in a quandary about how he could possibly relate to God. He was confident that the images and metaphors in his Christian faith were valid and true representations of God, but he had come to a deep conviction that they were mere scratches in the sand. The true nature of God must be enormously more complex, and perhaps dramatically simpler, than he had ever considered before.

One of the problems he wrestled with was the profound absence of femininity in the Christian representations of God. He was not trying to turn God into a woman, as some feminists attempt to do, but he was very uncomfortable with reducing God to a man, as his traditional beliefs seemed to want to.

God must be far more masculine and far more feminine than any finite mind could comprehend, and yet perhaps very much of neither. He was frustrated with the simplistic approach he and his culture had taken with this problem. We were all too happy to construct a nice tidy patriarchy and let it go at that. He had always been willing to live in that tiny tidy box until recently, when his transformation had begun.

Now this problem of the true nature of God was a primary consuming preoccupation. The more he had wrestled with this, the more he understood the inadequacy of his understanding and connectedness to God. He had not yet reached the point where he had any comfortable mode of communication with this great magnificent unfathomable Deity. He had no name for God. He had no pronoun rich enough in gender to refer to God. He felt wholly inadequate and unqualified to approach God, and in spite of his theological grounding and training, or perhaps because of it, could not bring himself to any resolution of this problem.

He was reluctant to discuss this with any of his Christian friends, because he knew the patent answers they would give him. They were the very same answers that had been comfortable and dependable for him all his life. Now they were no less true than they had ever been, but they were shallow and insufficient for the God of which he had begun to catch tiny glimpses. This God was far more. This God had a capacity and intensity and presence that all his metaphors and all his analogies and all his imagery could not express.

Mingled into his wrestlings was another thread of ponderous enigma: the nature, power, and mystery of woman. Just as he was confounded by the nature of God, he was also equally perplexed and challenged by the mysteries of the feminine and of that half of the species so intimately steeped in it. These two mysteries seemed to be connected. He felt that if he could understand the nature and strength and remarkable beauty of woman, it would somehow enhance and compliment his understanding of God. Thus far, both had been illusive.

Today had been a day of wrestling with all this. As he lay down, he had not come to any satisfactory conclusions, and was no more settled in the matter than he had been at the beginning of the day. Having settled onto the pillow and pulled up the covers against the February chill, he opened his eyes to see a remarkable thing. It was a gift. An omen from the God he could not fathom. An image bursting with intense symbolism. It was profoundly simple. Dramatic beyond telling. His heart melted in a puddle in the middle of his bed.

Outside his window, and high up in the sky, the full moon hung still and ready. She was bright and clear and no cloud was visible anywhere at all. And running straight through the heart of the moon from west to east was a tiny jet plane flying very high. It laid a long, lingering condensation trail straight out to the west from the moon as it went, and now as he watched, Cupid’s little arrow pulled the luminous silver con-trail through the moon, and shot swiftly into the eastern sky. The con-trail was backlit by the moon’s intense glow, and was joined to her in their reflective radiance.

This image was so striking, so dramatic and evocative, that he lost himself in it for as long as it lasted. It was not profound in any theological sense. But it was clearly a message from heaven to his awakening. It was perhaps not seen by any other living being, since timing and location were essential to the seeing. And although it is conceivable that the same precise image is visible many times over whenever the moon is full, he had never once in his entire life been in the right place and time to see such a thing. The God he could not fully comprehend had placed an indelible mark on a fleeting moment. It was a remarkable, tiny act of beauty and creation meant for one man and one moment. He would never forget it!

magic

there is a pool in the orchard of apples, 

and a high wall with an unseen door. 

there is a salmon that darts 

among little fishes, 

and a shadow that looms dark. 

there is a great sword of red bronze, 

and a little book of ivory and gold. 

there is a name concealed, 

and a laughter not spoken.

He had spent a lifetime without giving much thought to magic. As a child, he had thought, as most Americans in the ‘50s and ‘60s had, that magic was mere ignorance and superstition, easily discounted and refuted with rational scientific inquiry. Later, his evangelical orthodox Christian faith had informed him that magic was far more serious; that it represented the dark core of Satanic evil in the practice of humankind.

But now he had begun to look at all things with a new sense of discrimination and objectivity. The common beliefs of his peers could no longer enforce themselves on him simply because the group assumed them to be true. Now he must look long and hard at everything. Now he must study and consider every possibility openly and without investment in a particular conclusion. He could not dismiss possible outcomes simply because they had been deemed foolish, or even dangerous or evil. He must honestly evaluate them on their merits, and hold his mind open to new insights even after conclusions had been formed. And so it was with magic.

A very large part of magic seemed to subsist in the application and practice of secret knowledge and esoteric skill intertwined and bound with a heavy dose of intuitive power and perception. Beekeeping was a classic case in point. A beekeeper is usually a person who has an intuitive affinity to honeybees. This is, in most cases, very powerful. This affinity draws the one who bears it into study and present participation in the practice of beekeeping. As the novice learns more and more, by theory and experience, of the life and nature and behavior of the beehive and its occupants, he or she eventually grows confident to “charm” the bees with little or no protective gear. This is possible only because the beekeeper has, by observation, study, and practice, learned the true nature of the bees.

It is this knowing the true nature of a thing that is at the heart of magic. In the case of beekeeping, the practitioner understands, among other things, the triggers and early warnings of defensive behavior. She or he respects and understands these things and uses that understanding to manipulate the hive without incident.

A beekeeper also understands his or her place in the scheme of things, and knows that the bees have a right to their own defense. Receiving a sting is not an affront to a self-respecting beekeeper, but rather a mark of commitment to the knowledge. Stings are the very thing that protect and conceal the knowledge of the bees. Were it not for the real threat of being stung, one could easily keep bees without need of this knowledge and craft. And one could plunder the bees without respect or regard for their place. But the threat of even a single sting is enough to keep anyone lacking that intuitive connection to the bees from ever pursuing the knowledge that therefore remains obscure. Beekeepers generally are not secretive about their craft. They tend to talk freely on the subject. It is rather the hearers that keep the knowledge of bees hidden. Most who hear of the lore and craft of beekeeping dismiss it outright, unwilling to apply or even retain it because of their fear of the sting. And so, the secret is safe, even as its practitioners shout it from the rooftops.

Much that is considered magic is like beekeeping. Knowledge of the hidden nature of things is applied in ways that produce dramatic results. To the degree that knowledge is hidden, we call these manipulations magic. When the knowledge becomes common, we call it technology. Science is the business of transforming magic to technology; of bringing secret knowledge into the public domain. And as often as not, secrets are perpetuated as much by closed minds and hearts as by any true absence of information.

The realm of magic appears to be much larger than the potential of science as we know it currently. The intuitive and spiritual aspects of the universe are far too complex and illusive to be reduced to technology, or to effectively be derived by science. The scope of science today is more or less limited to the physical world. Magic, however, is boundless, and reaches wherever the nature of things is concealed. Magic is very much the business of knowing, often at an intuitive level, the true name of a thing; of respecting and understanding the significance and power of the hidden nature of that thing.

Many traditions value and guard the secrecy of the true names of people, animals and things, respecting the power that deep understanding gives. As he pondered this fact, he began to understand that knowing the true name of a thing was far more than simply knowing a word held in secret. In many traditions, a boy or girl receives a new, secret name at initiation into adulthood. This act is powerful and profoundly significant, but now he began to see that it could only be a small representation of the true reality of the hidden nature of the person receiving the name.

The true name of a person or thing must be far more than any secret word could possibly contain. He was beginning to realize the profound power and depth of understanding that long-held intimate friendship could provide in the process of knowing the true name of another; the extraordinary responsibility and commitment that came when a true friend revealed him- or herself in confidence. This was magic at its most profound level.

golden fire

...last night as I was sleeping, 

I dreamt — marvellous error!— 

that I had a beehive 

here inside my heart. 

And the golden bees 

were making white combs 

and sweet honey 

from my old failures... 

—Antonio Machado 

Today he had captured the first swarm of bees of the new Spring. It was a nice one, about 5 pounds. A friend had come along to see what this big adventure was all about. Later they talked and marveled at the remarkable little creatures and the mysteries of their world. He found himself trying, as he had so many times before to express the intense energy and depth of his connection to the bees. She asked if he had that energy within him. He was a little surprised by the question, and even more surprised at being surprised by it. At first he said he didn’t know.

But really, he did know. He’d had a close, intensely charged connection to the energy of honey bees for as long as he could remember; at least as far back as second or third grade. He drew deeply on that energy whenever he was near a colony or when field bees were working near by. The hum of bees in a field or tree totally disarmed him and put him into a state of wonder and tranquility he could never describe. Yet it was not just peaceful. The tranquility came from being energized; from being nourished and nurtured and filled and full, and from touching life at a profound magical place.

He knew the energy of bees at a very personal level. It was like nothing else in his experience. It was not simply one of those beautiful parts of nature that make you feel good when you experience them. It was far different from the beauty of a sunset, or the power and rhythm of the sea, or the songs of birds or the babbling of a stream. It was raw, pure, dangerous, peaceful, primitive, sophisticated, living power. It was golden fire burning brightly, right through his core; radiant and hot and driving the engines of his soul.

Bees were for him unlike anything else in creation. There was a spiritual power and energy in them that exponentially transcended their biological potential. They were simple social insects, and yet they carried a balanced charge more powerful and intense than any other creature he knew of, including human beings.

This charge was ancient beyond knowing, simple beyond understanding, gentle beyond the softest touch, more personal and intimate than any whispered secret, more compelling than the sunrise. It moved him every time he sensed it. It was a gift and a secret; a secret he kept even when he told it because he could not find words that could reveal it. He had struggled with the telling and was resolved and at rest knowing that it was just too much to tell. And yes, as she had suspected, he had that energy within him.