If there is one thing that I know about you she said, it is that you can make a fire from a few fallen twigs of maple, a handful of pine cones, and desire. 

There is no guide and you won’t have one to share when you’re done. After the river recedes, you will walk with your shadows down to the forest with a basket big enough to gather for two or three if you can hold it. Don’t be ashamed if you can only gather for yourself. There is time.

You’ll harvest moss from the floor to make medicine for your neighbors. The land remembering you back with each touch. Carry your lantern, even without fuel. It will be lit with unsuspecting mercies that you’ll use to find your footing as you go. Or learn to trust in the dark as your dear friend taught you barefoot in the backyard following the creek along the bank into the unknown. 

You’ll light candles and sing old songs to call on your ancestors’ resilience through similar times. You will not turn away from this grief, but allow it to live up through you as a prayer, however you pray, that will carry itself light on the wind into the well of sanctuary we all feed from, back into these banks that hold us.

And you will be held in ways you never could have dreamed, yet I hope that you will bigger than you were before, alone under the oaks and together over the soup made from what’s left.

Call the river back restored, your bodies back whole and moving with ease, your homes and businesses back stick by stick, baptized in sorrow and hope for what is and what will be. 

Dig your toes into the land and remind her that you are here. We are. With homes cobbled together from waxed twine and broken bottles and a neighbor’s touch that will be warmed with fires of twigs from fallen maples, a handful of pinecones and desire.