Out Here: Something I wrote while I lived in Japan

Tonight I walked through Tokushima Central Park and saw God in the trees.

I saw it there, the void, the infinite nothing everythingness that I remembered from when I was a boy and afraid of the dark. I saw that same laughing face I’d always seen, in the trees at night along Lake Wallenpaupack when I’d stay out at the swing past dark and have to find my way back to the house alone. I saw it then, all right then, in those bushy trees lining the hill, the rockfaces and terraced walls. I saw it all there, right there, just as I’d always seen it. That quiet swallowed me, as I heard the taiko drums in the distance, the dance troupes’ rumble as they practiced for Awa Odori. He smiled at me again, and I knew what I’d always known. I knew I’d never forget it again.

I got back on my bike and rode through the park, passing a few of the dance troupes. One of the women watching had her toddler son with her, weaving his way in between the dancers as they practiced. And I saw that, that is why. That’s the reason why. That is the reason why.

To see God in all things, something always inside me, to see the God in me. Warm nights lost in the trees. So glad I made it back here. That laughing face in the dark who I had to learn to trust. As I look out on Tokushima Station Plaza, people-watching as I always do, I know it’s that. It’s always been that. Tonight, biking across the city, age eight hiding in the skunk plants playing flashlight freeze tag, falling off my self-made zip-line and knocking the wind out of myself, lying on the floor of my Aurora apartment begging myself not to kill myself, lying under the Lake Michigan stars on the cool sand next to my dad, the infant in her mother’s arms staring me in the eyes as they walked off the plane, that thatness, that’s always been it. That’s always been it. I walk out at night and lose myself in the trees.