There is a certain story that I’d like to tell you. Once, when I was a young man, I was privileged enough to spot an angel at its work.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was mid-morning. I was in the garden. The sun was bright and hot. It was a day in late spring or early summer, or some day in between the two.
It had rained the night before. I was walking barefoot through the grass, which was still wet. The trees were bright with water-sheen over their own green, and the flowers were somewhat swollen from their recent drink.
In the southwest corner of the garden there was an arbor into which I sometimes liked to steal. Honeysuckle covered it. Bees were always busy about it. And it provided a cool refuge if the sun were particularly hot above. It was also a refuge from human eyes, tucked away behind a line of greenery, accessible only by a funny little stair that rose to the next terrace.
Barefoot in the grass I descended the stair, notebook in hand, and went to my little hideaway. It was a morning for poetry. The rain-drenched garden was stirring words in me, and I wanted to take them down in quiet solitude, away from folk or the sun.
I brushed at the little seat with my handkerchief, then sat. Near to my face a bee flew by on its meandering way, unaware of my presence, or uncaring. As I pulled my pen from my shirt pocket my eyes drifted lazily to the screen of greenery that separated my hideaway from the path. And there on the gravel path down which I had only just then walked I saw a curious sight.
The old gardener carried his bucket of tools in his right hand, and mopped his brow with a scrap of cloth in his left. His steps were slow, but his gnarled hands had a way with flowers that made the garden the envy of many. That day he was whistling a little tune, but there was a wince of pain around his eyes, and his breath weezed. He was, strangely, without his hat, and the sun beat down on his scalp through a few whisps of white.
His whistling suddenly stopped as his failing eyes went from the path to something ahead of him. His bucket dropped from his hand and clattered. The tools spilled into the gravel.
I saw the angel appoach as the old man smiled. The angel was not smiling. In its eyes I saw something of its mood. Those eyes gave me to know the angel’s merriment, its peacefullness, its compassion and its understanding. Captivated, I watched the angel’s unchanging expression as the old man fell back into the gravel. Even as he fell his eyes were open. There was a smile on his lips. His fall seemed to happen without sound. I watched the angel stand over him for a moment, looking down. Then it lifted its eyes to the middle distance. It turned somehow and passed beyond my understanding. The garden was silent, undisturbed.
Becoming aware of the buzzing of the bee again I opened my notebook and took down words regarding flowers and rain-dappled grass.