April Umbrellas

“April Umbrellas” is a story from the upcoming When All The Worlds Were Singing.

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I walk in the beauty You have surrounded me with, trees lush with spring bloom, adorned with new green and flowers of red and white and purple that did not trouble to wait until May. Your sweet, gentle shower sings softly upon my umbrella and the pavement I walk. Birds darting tree to tree over power lines and houses are surely laughing at me as I plod over slabs of fake stone and dodge dark puddles in my futile effort to remain dry.

I look into Your silvered sky with clouds drifting by and feel the love everywhere within and around; tiny buds in my ears grow the flowers of joy from the seed of Your names sung by beautiful voices somewhere across the beloved Earth, in the Deep of time, carried by waves caressing the aether. I do not trouble the molecules of the air with my unmusical voice, content to feel Your names silently on my lips as I walk in bliss.

You remind me of Your love with each rising breeze and caress of soft rain that dampens my clothes; gravity and air resistance dance gently with the muscles of my arm and my laughing mind that strives to join the dance and guide the path of my umbrella to press into the wind, to keep me maybe a little dry before I get home, but You will have none of it. With a joyful laugh You bat my silly shield aside with a puff of irresistible wind, like smiling lips blowing dandelion seeds later in the season—as I pass the first yellow sunburst flowering through a pavement crack and Your cool rain blows in my naked face.

Water drips from my hair, down my face, falling to the ground to merge into rivulets and beautiful puddles and the roots of growing things making their slow way between the slabs of fake stone and houses and power lines. Drinking the same sweetness, the trees adorn themselves with new green and flowers of red and white and purple, forgetting all about the calendar, as I have in this timelessness.

In Your embrace all is bliss, and my heart is lush with spring bloom, and I walk forever in the beauty You have surrounded me with.