Starlight hangs overhead; polka dots of brilliance in a sapphire sky.

I’m reflecting on how grief is eternal but so is love, as I walk while the dog keeps time at my feet, and the gentle palms remind me in their endless wisdom: grace is infinite.

I’ve been in Kauai 9 weeks. Some days are poetry in motion, some days are just a script of normal life that happens to be set by the sand and sea. All days I am grateful I am here, all days I am reaching up- heart open wide– ready to receive what is next.

Most days I get a response, some days the response is simply the crash of the sea.

There are things I miss about Alaska. People and faces. The way the tundra turns to cranberry dusk this time of year and the sunset becomes a golden pot of indolence. But I drove home to the beat of pink streaks, cotton clouds, blue skies and ocean cries this evening, and my brother kept time in the clouds, as I realized- I don’t miss a thing.

Grief really never does leave you. It weeps secretly in quiet corners; hidden from sight until it’s ready to emerge on its own volition, keeping time to a timetable all its own.

Blue ginger strums the blues singing soul to the company of azul snapdragons and little bells; the flowers here know when to joy and when to cry with songs I cannot sing but whose tune holds so true I know the sound of deepest empathy.

Grief transforms. It huffed and puffed and blew my house down in 2016, a deconstruction of self, a resurrection of soul. So it is fitting in 2017 that I am on this island: her soul beats so deep you can’t help but keep time in her keep.

Foreign at first, this land is now my friend. Strange with wonder, the flowers continually teach me to speak their silent unspeak. The sky holds new lessons every day; the spirits of this place stay continually linked.

I am something that happy doesn’t quite capture. Content. Found. Equipped. At peace.

I walked a long road to return to myself. Underneath a starry breeze, a white dog trotting gently beside, we return home, home, home– keeping time to the sound of love’s beat.