To the Bright Edge of the World

by Eowyn Ivey

It is something I love very much about him. He goes not in search of obstacles, only the paths around them. Anything seems possible.

That is the excitement. We catch only glimpses, a burst of movement, a flap of wings, yet it is life itself beating at shadow’s edge. It is the unfolding of potential; all of what we might experience and see and learn awaits us.

Yet what of love? That is another, more solid thing; it is not tricked by fine lights or spirits. It is more of earth and time, like a river-turned stone.

There was something diminishing about the conversation, too, as if suddenly we had become only, collectively, and forever Mothers, with no room for an entire individual.

Father spoke of a light that is older than the stars, a divine light that is fleeting yet always present if only one could recognize it. It pours in and out of the souls of the living and dead, gathers in the quiet places in the forest, and on occasion, might reveal itself in the rarest of true art.

It is a grand, inscrutable wildness. Never are the people here allowed to forget that each of us is alive only by a small thread.