Levitation, by Zona Gale

LEVITATION

by: Zona Gale (1874-1938)

HREE times that day came the sense of levitation.
As if court-house walk, walnut shadow, a length of sunny lawn let her go by with no tribute of her touch.
It seemed as if the wonderful would happen.
She waited, prepared for the vision.
The day flowered, ripened, mellowed, fell upon night.
No presence opened or signaled.
Then she went to embosom that which the hours had left her.
She faced her day, and her day gathered itself as a living thing with a voice and deep eyes.
It said, I was wonderful.

Yet the only thing to happen that day had been this:
Old Edgerton Bascom came to the porch, selling buttons.
She bought from him, picked her dahlias for his wife.
He went away, comforted, restored to self-respect by her purchase.
Perhaps when levitation comes it will be a matter of this kind
Rather than of calculation and reckoning.

"Levitation" is reprinted from The Secret Way. Zona Gale. New York: Macmillan Co., 1921.