Windows Poem by Grant House

Our senses are the gateway to the marvelous and mundane.
They are our windows on the world.
Sitting in the visitor's chair at the foot of a hospital bed,
I look out of the bland rectangular window at a bush turned red by the season visible against the wall of the adjoining wing.

The forests of the region are on fire with color.
In a day or two, the autumn spectacle will have drained down gutters and streams leaving only drab brown and gray for the inevitable winter to come.
From where I sit, none of this can be seen except the rain on the glass and the red apparition framed by the darkened room.

Likely an afterthought of ornamental shrubbery and barely visible from any other vantage or at any other season for that matter, the shiny wet red leaves of this common bush became the last whole image upon which my mother would exclaim during the few remaining hours of her life.

"It's beautiful, " she said raising her left arm slightly and with great effort attempting to point toward the partially covered window.
"Do you see my red bush? " she whispered in a faint raspy but dearly familiar voice.

Mother was bringing me into her view of the world now as she had always done when my brother and I were little boys.
She had given us the world one piece at a time calling out majestic and minor details that neither of us would have noticed on our own.
"Oh, what a wonderful morning, " she would sing, throwing the curtains aside flooding the room with sunshine.

Startled and blown free from whatever dream web we were caught in, our childhood days would jump from the covers.
Her robin sang through those windows.
The great thunderheads would billow high above.
Little insects inhabited the corners of that world.

Nothing was left unappreciated in her clear-eyed vision of God's miraculous universe.

I see things through soul-windows given to me by my mother.
I see God's miracles in expansive mountain vistas and infinitesimally small light refracting drops of water.
I see the world through the lens of her delight.

In that marvelous twist of perspective, I have developed a habit of finding the most inconspicuous, dusty, unappreciated corner or detail and giving it the dignity of my awareness.
In a long ignored wall my eyes seek the least angle of mortar and brick.
In that sad place I look for the least particle of grit and dwell on it for a moment.

At the curb of a car blown street where ancient newspapers gather along the former trail that once passed nobly through a completely wiped out forest, a renegade weed bravely stages a comeback.

I have been left with a wonder about the ephemeral connections between the cosmos in all its greatness and the small beings that share space and time with us back down here on the surface.
Slight and dimmed by incredible time and distance, the farthest star is a brilliant shimmering multifaceted gem viewed from the fine prospect of here and now.

Large panoramic views are often enjoyed best through the smallest of windows.
Rather than blocking my view, tree windows have come to frame many of my favorite memories.
A glint of sunlight manages to filter through the leaves of majestic redwoods and shines a dancing spotlight on the translucent tip of fern on which an errant insect goes about his business.

My mother gave me the gift of commonplace miracles.
When I can, I pass it along in ways that may not seem to matter much.
I carefully remove the spider from the wall behind my pillow and take her outside to live in the garden.
I ask the rodent and his unseen family to live elsewhere by removing their windfall food source along with my new bird feeder from the tree in the side yard.

I no longer consume food made by killing animals.
Once the window opened on their suffering, I could no longer bring myself to consume their innocent and tortured bodies.

On our way home from the airport after the funeral, we top the last hill and look over the treetops in the evening's silhouette glow.
I know I am nearing my home.

Gazing through the hospital window at the brilliant red bush illuminated for all its worth by the late afternoon sun, Mother was coming home, too.

"Isn't it just wonderful? " she exclaimed.
"Yes, Mother, it truly is."