On the Outside

First notes struck --
suspense building, and ...
nothing.
I cried hard
this time --
because I could not remember.
I,
for whom musical recall defines
every momentous yesterday,
could not feel even a twinge of familiarity
toward the prelude which had
ushered me onstage.
As in my having learned -- from another -- of my
baffled moment
while playing piano in the pit,
when the director admonished the singer,
I was now an outsider, once again,
to my own meaningful flow of being.
My alternately filed nuances of memory
(by this, realized as hidden
in compartments secret from me) --
the thing which
excludes me.
And so I beheld,
as a first-time audience,
the magical introduction
to my own character's entrance
over 40 years past,
while the tears streamed down --
because I had never
heard anything like it.

Silent Stroll

No matter that the road and driveway were impassable with snow-covered ice. The singing birds knew better. 

Dappled with sunlight on the inside, she glanced outside to the gray but bright mountain vista this early evening in early February. Although seated at her desk, in her mind she strolled outdoors, on a warmer gray day -- yes, in the morning, on an unimposing gray day! -- filled with all the colors of bold winter and tender Spring, deep shades and pastels intertwined in her heart. Buoyed up, infused with His strength, touched by His peace, her spirit was reassured. "Reassured of what?" one might have asked her. "Reassured of anything," she might have answered.

Jesus: God. The longer she knew Him, the less she knew Him ... but the more she knew that He knew her.

As Thunder

The silence that falls
after one utters thoughts which, to oneself,
are as natural as rainwater,
is as thunder exploding
from a sunlit blue sky.

Where It Goes Blurry

Trauma, far from casting doubt
on the idyllic picture it punctures,
testifies, by contrast of itself,
to the beauty and precision
of all that came
before.

Impromptu

Spasms of shyness
dot my way,
blotting my socials with doom.
No eye contact, I,
so I weave briskly by --
as though there were too little room.
Comes on like a seizure,
this mute social "sneezure":
"God bless me!" -- I pray for a word ...
anything! or may I sing?
"Help me!" heart begs, whispering --
yet only my "sneezure" is heard.

Written by me on October 30, 2021.

Lucid Grey Hope (God's Kiss of Impending Memory)

 

Be steady, feet, upon the bridge 'tween yesterday and today

Evil fairies hung a sign: "Past forgotten, straightaway!"

But remember I do, and remember I will

Just what is missing from the woods on the hill.

 

In the Service of Sanity

Fatima, 1917 -- world at razor's edge --

Heaven's grim plea hurtling through the decades ...

dismissed at 83 years.

From Rome, 2000, echoed

the sound of sanity breaking,

anchor let loose:

a muted and incongruous Third Secret

set adrift.

In reflexive protection of the mind,

and to a degree unknown to itself,

my soul -- now a mere onlooker at every Mass --

began to detach

from the Barque of St. Peter.