In the middle of the night a huge limb from a tree in front of our apartment fell.

It landed in the narrow, two foot distance between our parked car and the neighbours. Just missing both. As if a message lain there by design. In the morning, we stood outside marvelling at this blind, improbable luck. Makes one consider providence. What that might actually mean. It’s amazing how much of our lives happen beyond our knowing– each life composed of near misses that speed by while we, in the dark, sleep.

But I wasn’t troubled, standing there in the sun. It was early enough in the morning that the air was still light, still unexpectedly pure, and it felt like the day when everything turned green. Jones was jumping about amidst the curious mathematics of ants, and Rachelle in her housecoat, like some idea of the angelic, was gathering in the wounded fledgling that had been cast from the nest when the branch suddenly fractured from the tree the night before.

Everything so innocent, so hopeful.

And then two old friends, both who happened to be out independently enjoying a morning walk, chanced by. All of us, after all the years, arriving at this point and place in time– as if agreed upon at a drunken dinner party years earlier. And it had been years. So very many of them it seemed. We all carried different weights now, you could see that, but we didn’t bother to talk about them. We were just relieved to see one another, I think, and we chatted as if nothing was different, even though absolutely everything was different. A strange, beautiful space in the day, not one of us imaging the city fox laying in wait for night, and then coming softly to take the wounded bird we had hoped to restore.