Gray

The day glints raw and gray through the kitchen pane.  We read the last two Psalms for devotions this morning, the kids in slippers and me under wool against the cold filtering through the crack in the bedroom window.

There is a lot of singing in Psalms 149 and 150, a call of the peasant saints to battle.  

This morning, I am tethered in flight, my mouth full of rust instead of song.

As Katy pulls on pair after pair of jeans in the kitchen behind me...this pair too tight, and this one, too...my thumb rests idly on the keypad of the phone, the doctor's number so long memorized scrolling past my mind's eye marquee endlessly.  The checkbook is empty and much needed relief has been delayed...again.  Our favorite cat lies dead in a ditch, waiting for us to pull on clothes to go pick her up in a blanket and carry her to the woods to be buried.  The rattling of the Lake Superior rocks in the pails on the porch tell me Rosy already knows - too well for five - how to build a cairn over a grave.

Instead of the usual thrashing of soul, the grinding of teeth and squeezing hard of eyelids and the salty bitterness of tears on my upper lip, all today is raw and gray, like the pre-sunrise dawn air outside.  It isn't fall yet, it isn't summer either.  I sigh and turn back to the task behind me.

I lie awake;

I have become like a bird alone on a roof.

For I eat ashes with my food,

and mingle my drink with tears.

(Psalm 102)