Our Lives are Delivered - Even When We Can’t Read The Address.

“Wind finally gets where it was going   
through the snowy trees, and the river, even               
when frozen, arrives at the right place.                        

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life   
is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.”
                                                     Thomas R. Smith (from the poem “Trust”)

Photo by Mathyas Kurmann on Unsplash

The poem “Trust” by Thomas R. Smith muses about how trustingly we post a letter. We hand our bill payments or birthday cards to an unknown person at the desk or drop them in a mail box on the corner. How interesting it is to look back at how the “letter” of my life has passed from container to container, hand to hand, carried in backpacks and guitar cases, folded up in so many coat or shirt pockets, holding space like a bookmark or laid carefully on night tables or tossed in the passenger seat of a million rental cars. We get from here to there so mysteriously so gratefully, because arriving well and in relative safety was never a guarantee. A letter will sometimes get lost. I know mine did more than once. And yet we are here.