Part 2: When the Earth Fell in Love with the Sky

Part Two of a Two-Part Series on Love and Legends:

I was a little girl once, warm and quiet underneath the legends of origin.

They say the sky came down and made love to the earth, and thus, the gods were born.

He was captivated by her beauty.  She smiled under his protection.

I am not a little girl today.

Your smile is as old to me as the legends of this world- and your eyes are as warm as the protection of the sky over the earth- and when I close mine, I smell dust. 

I smell bone.

And behind my eyelids, I see a storied beginning.

When the Earth fell in love with the Sky:

She laid there, full of dust and bone, and gazed up at the cool, distant expanse of blue. She was silent- as silent as the earth could be before she was filled with life.  Lonely and quiet.  Her rivers were deep, but they were empty.  Her mountains were tall, but they were empty.  Her forests, and oceans, and valleys, and jungles, and deserts were empty.

When Night fell, she watched the way he pined after Day- and distantly she wondered.

Sometimes, Earth dreamed.

She didn't know it, but she was dreaming of lovely things, such as peaches and swing-sets.  Keep smiling, I remember, too.

Sky watched Earth from above- and was amazed by his own reflection in her waters.  Neither understood what the other was.

Day broke- Night passed.  Steam ran down from the high places and Wind began to play a song through the grassy low places and the tops of the trees.

I believe in a different story of origin.  But even now I think of these two hopeless, lovely beings from time to time- and I breathe in the pine trees, I gasp at the glory of the mountain- I seek after the sounds of you cooking me breakfast in the wee hours of the morning- and I wonder, what would it have been like to be Earth?

Take this sad song.  Make me better.

I've been meaning to tell you, dinner's at six.

In and out of days, time passed as the Sky continued to hover above Earth- how much time? Can anybody ever know?

One Twilight, while Day and Night were lost in the glow of each others present luminescence- Sky understood.

He spoke to Earth silently, in a whisper. Reached down a hand to clasp hers, strong.  "Cross over with me."

And then, Night was over- and a beautiful, acoustic sunrise was born.

With it, came the fish to swim in the rivers and oceans- and the beasts to inhabit the fields- the many, favored birds which belonged both to Sky and Earth, and earned a special place in both of their hearts.

"And it was all yellow," plays from your radio.  I am no longer lost in thought about these ancient legends of origin... Have I ever told you that you smell like something beautiful from my childhood?

Open.  Love is on the way.

The joy of the my heart is golden.  That is, factually, a shimmering shade of yellow.

Love rejoices with the truth, a letter written very long-ago to a church in Corinth, tells me this.

Listen- can you hear the noise of the bittersweet?

These steel strings greet outstretched fingertips, and I, too, remember that time you sheltered me from the wind.

In the hazy stretch of evening-time, I can hear the fluttering of damselfly wings, and the gutting, distant call of the loon.

Memory brings to mind a vulnerability deeper than the mysteries of this old world- and I stand humbled in the light of a Savior who makes my weaknesses turn to beauty in your beholden eyes.

These country roads- will they really take me home? 

I look down and my apron is full of apples.  Sometimes it is full of flour. Full of cans.  Full of walnuts.  It is always full of life.  I cast my eyes down the hall and I know they slumber there.  The tinies.

Tiny fingers.  Tiny ears.  Tiny eyelashes. Tiny freckles- like mine.   Tiny toes.

Rust.  Rain.  Warm ceramic in my hands.

Your hands on my steering wheel- and I don't even mind?

Whisper.

Sometimes, I close my eyes and I wonder what it must have been like to be Earth, all those legends ago, when the Earth fell in Love with the Sky.

Sometimes, I think I know.

Dust.  Bone.