A broken tulip

What better way to start the new year than with a large mug of cocoa, watching as the early setting winter sun brushes the bare willow tree into vibrant gold against a pale gray sky?

As colours fade outdoors, my attention turns to the worlds of colour we can create indoors. Watercolour becomes a daily call to the self to set aside fear of failure and learn to see colour, see light, see perspective and space like never before. Embrace imperfection, said the arts department at my university, and I intend to do just that this year.

Today, instead of watercolours, I begin searching for ideas for a mural in the room I share with my sister. Google’s rule #1 for painting murals: make sure you have permission. Said sister has given permission for the back wall of a standing closet to become a mural. Said sister also selected, from my mural inspiration board, Van Gogh’s almond blossom painting. No fear of failure means even Van Gogh’s work is fair game.

As I figure out how to paint almond blossoms with acrylics in the back of a cupboard, I also have begun handwriting the psalms of ascent in the languages that have touched the lives of my sisters and I. As the black pen quickly scrawls German, swirls through Arabic script, stumbles through the Dutch and Frisian of our ancestry, and skips through memory-rich Lingala, Swahili, French, and of course, English, I let the action guide me into thoughts of ascent, of pilgrimage, of journeying on from where we’ve been to where we’re going — the mountain of God. The emotions of the psalms spill over the pages, longing written in so many languages. I can hardly believe that my heart can hold the whispers of so many words, but it does. This is a life of pilgrimage.

I fold the psalm-laden pages into paper cranes. They’ll flock from the roof of our closet, above the almond blossoms. They’ll gently point us onwards in this pilgrimage of hope.

feathered words
flock
paper wings
rise
tracing the mountain. 
it is uphill work
to return. 

oh that  I had wings
to fly away and be at rest. 
suspended, the paper birds
wait. 

as do I. 
feet curled
tucked under
each other, 
chin in hand. 

each bird carries
ancient prayers
of pilgrims
rewritten

they dance 
above
my bowed head.