Looking for the Bishop

Looking for the bishop, I thought I almost saw him in the alpenglow of a harvest moon, in a hedge bursting with buds no bigger than a child's fingerprints, in a neighbor's plastic pinwheel spinning clockwise in the wind. I thought I saw him in tiny grains of hope, in a woman brushing the hair from a sullen boy's face, in the balm of sudden healing from shredded clouds racing from the stars. The bishop is will-of-a-wisp, a puff of breeze, more hopeful in his flowing red gown than any figure I know. He walks by my window on his daily sojourns, emerging from the hidden chambers of peace and clarity to sustain me in surprising ways, a figure so out of character with this part of central Michigan as to be laughable, lovable and mysterious all at once. His hood shrouds his head like an oddly draped flower, announcing his presence before you notice the thin, small body sheathed in flowing folds. I have never seen his hair. The bishop isn't American or white but eastern Indian, with a triton beard and long delicate fingers that taper off like the hands in a Byzantine painting. He is doubly, triply strange for all that, a man visiting from another world yet a part of this one, more vivid because of this. No one can quite tell me how he has come to be here, but would any reason make his presence less mysterious?

I see him walking everywhere in this small town, taking the night air upon an evening, the hems of his robe swirling in gentle eddies around his slippered feet. A part of me wants to follow him or fit inside one of his pockets like a bright polished key. I would take up residence in his flowering hood, become his watchtower, his bird's eye view, or hunker down where the clean folds of his robe billow out into forgetfulness, the ripple of a fresh, gentle wind. I want nothing more than to walk the way he does, watchful and alert, more incongruent here than a rare plumaged bird whose colors remain unbesmirched by the drabness of winter. He is the cardinal bird that could make all the difference, burning his sacred red feathers in a slow fire that will never burn out. He walks by my house sometimes, and each time my heart gets a little lighter, clearer, opening a tiny door that feels like a frail hope ascending until I realize I am supposed to notice him, take his example to heart, follow his lead, and become pure, vivid color in a land of black and white.

What do I know about him? Nothing I don't see in his thoughtful gait, the alert owl look in his dark brown eyes. Nothing he does not already show me though he does not know it, a simple long walk, the veil of a consciousness he gives me each time I see him. I need his walk as a covert response to things that make me uneasy, to the vague malaise dripping like a bad faucet at the heart of town, the malice of revved-up pickup trucks, gun racks; the bishop shows me how to live here in subtle, surprising ways, how to walk in a small town and the kind of grace I ached for without realizing it, his long red robe and careful steps over patches of ice.

You could go a long time without an example like the bishop, twenty, thirty years, a whole life; you could ignore people or signs like him, not notice them, not take them into your heart or let them peel it open layer by precious layer; you could choose to close the curtains or drapes, lock the door and turn up the tv; but if the bishop should ever walk by your window or down your neighborhood street, you could have the opportunity to sense the hushed lightness trailing behind him in the wake of his passage, the seed blossoms of his robes riding the air to find a place...