This is the life, bo-bo, bo-bo-bo. Bohemia!
– “Boho Days” tick, tick…BOOM!
My Catholic friend sees God in rays of white sunshine parting scrolls of clouds.
But as she points out the window of my white Chevy Cruze,
I’m more captured by the intricate layers of off-white bridges,
the twists and turns of the highways, the cloverleafs, the diamonds,
finding God even—no, especially—in the traffic circles.
Her camera roll seeks to capture the pale gold, blush, periwinkle right before sunrise—
mine?—those two yellow lines, those yield and crossing signs, reflective,
especially in the dark of night, against a canvas of mountains and hallway of trees
on a still highway road lit only by brights and understood only by
cruise control and top-of-your-lungs theatre songs.
I could never capture the security and peace, the shalom,
striking a chord that is well with my soul, feeling seen and heard, fully known, yada —
found not in untangling the twine of hay bales, but the tumbles of wires and cords,
the satisfaction of unknotting earbuds from charging cables, plugging in
and listening to my pastor from miles away, not that I would mind a drive back home,
especially since the drive is home—found not in grassy hills for Jack and Jill to wind up and
down and up and down, but stacks of red brick lined by black fire escapes for Nina to climb,
mira, respera, breathe in ancient libraries, hidden nooks in which to translate ancient texts,
gráphete, gráphete—hidden barely-holding-on staircases lined by not-quite-dead dandelions
and small rooms with open wooden doors filled with ugly rugs and snuggly pillows—not iambic
pentameter, strict meter, elegant rhyme, but words pouring out all stream-of-consciousness,
not words of a psalmist, but a boho-Christian hybrid, just trying to find her way home, shalom,
down a tangled earbud road on the fourth floor of a rickety liberal arts college building, so high
it’s dizzying, swaying, too old to have an elevator or an environmentally-friendly hand dryer,
but just right, like scripture to be unpacked and the meaning of human life divinely understood.
by: Rebekah Cook