The park was our parish

The park was our parish

That Sunday when we hiked the canyon, I
wore black lace underwear from Victoria’s
Secret, which I started thinking about when
Joann and I sat on a flat white rock in the
sun and baptized our hot bare feet in the
inches-deep clear stream while Darryl hiked
ahead to look for a shaded place called The
Cathedrals where their friend Louise, who’d
recently died, had directed her ashes to be
scattered and when Darryl got back he said,
“I think Louise sent me a present – a yellow
butterfly flew all around my head while I
stood still back there!” and then we hiked
back to the trailhead and I was thinking
about why I chose that lace underwear in the
first place and how it was likely that I was
the only hiker wearing lace panties even though
it was an easy guess, because besides me, we
were a priest, a nun, and a bunch of Boy Scouts
and then the swallowtail – or maybe it really
was Louise? – flittered around us on shining
saffron wings and was so quickly lost in the
spring-new green mesquites that we hardly
noticed that she had been with us.

May 8, 2004
Lubbock, after a visit to Quitaque, Texas

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