Cloud
The early
Celts believed in “thin places”: [Places] where a person experiences only a
very thin divide between past, present, and future times; places where a person
is somehow able, possibly only for a moment, to encounter a more ancient
reality within present time; or places where perhaps only in a glance we are
somehow transported into the future.
-
EDWARD C. SELLNER in Wisdom of the
Celtic Saints.
He tells her.
There is
wind here now. Night. And I am cold without your arms or even your
eyes to hold me. A high stage. Years take me to this last slope of snow and
ice. I held many different lives these
past two days although now, in the finishing of this moment, they have been
stripped from me and fall away into the darkness below.
Look. They are down there somewhere. As ghosts or photographs illuminated by the
moonlight. For now I will stare at the
aurora borealis. And stars with meaning
for the sailors. I shiver, I wait for
the dawn and the beginning of another life.
And although I will come to carry other worlds in my eyes and my heart,
this memory is a cloud in the air that surrounds me. It fills my lungs on every draw, from the
moment of my return. The sharp diaphragm
inhale, of tears, gratitude, and sadness.
Back in
town, I was so tired I never even heard you come into the room. I only remember your arm in the dark.
© 1999 J. Popowich
No comments:
Post a Comment