In the midst of creeping worry and mounting grief—a moment of calm:
almost happiness, not epiphanic, simply present; and when I turned
my head to it, of course it left, but in leaving, left a warm shadow
and a pleasing shimmer that almost produced a tone, the kind one feels
the northern lights should make. I leaned in, then followed
its disappearing form, as if down a dark street within me, deep inside—
I want to say—for it took some breathing to arrive at a destination,
that, while rumoured, I hadn’t truly encountered; a terminus, the terms
of which I’d not fully undergone; an end, let’s say, without an end, which
presented as a dark stillness, that permits no entrance unless it enters you,
and isn’t there unless you expect it may be, which is not to say it’s imaginary,
instead, to see that it’s prior to you, and realer than one imagines;
for as I found myself standing there, or rather, being there,
I longed to call out some name: the thousand names of YHWH,
but couldn’t name one, and it mattered not, as I couldn’t stay,
and just as well, for now, compelled, I sent a word of care
to a family member who suffers, and checked on a friend
who has a weight on his heart, made an overdue call, wrote
a consoling email, also overdue; and now many names flooded in,
and I quietly and earnestly bowed, and prayed for them all,
and then for the millions I didn’t know, and all the while
it was though a power was going out of me.
