There's a little red-haired thief who lives in our neighborhood. I watch him from our window, and though I don't love any thief, I must admit he's stolen my heart. He's maybe nine by now, alone, the outcast of the Bud-light kids who taunt and swagger. He catches grasshoppers in season, holding them gently up to his eyes to peer between his fingers as they tickle his hands. It may be noone warned him of tobacco juice, or maybe it's for this he studies them so fiercely before replacing them benignly on the ground like a pint-sized god of good intent.
Today, his wandering footsteps took him through our yard where he picked up and discarded, picked up and discarded, picked up and discarded all these artifacts I've given to summer flowers. He's on his knees, his nose almost touching the ground, his little back curved as he studies something moving between blades of grass too green for the season, harbored by the mugwort. His body is so frail, I'm not sure he's eaten a full meal in his short lifespan -- but then, too, I'm not sure what tiny angelthiefs eat.
I want to bake a pan of ginerbread and open my door, but of course, this is not possible. I can't place good treasures out for him to steal, either, for that way leads to wrong turns. All I can do is bless the fairies that lent him to this dry neighborhood where imagination seems wholly his alone, this wild child, our red-haired thief. If intention means anything, I intend he find a path that leads toward keeping what he's got now -- wild joy and an infinite future of grasshopper blessings.
Just that you let him wander... not so easy in the suburbs and cities... Blessings that he finds his way.
ReplyDelete