Time is a Creature

fooling around with long forms and prosey-ness. Trying to find my voice again.

I am not a secret, even the saints say so: but filled with light, even when I ignore it in my own darkness, far below. Pieced diligently into myriad boxes, in triplicate, & if my hands were more delicate, my own fear of never being open enough to receive anything at all... Not for real, not for keeps - Even as the dawn shudders open the shadows of night, like hurricane shutters tremble tightly sitting, wrapped against my ignorant sight, (I wasn’t born here, I hear myself say to the air, to no one in particular) that strange grace pours in again (but I got here as fast as I could).

See, I don't remember how to say it so imbued, it feels empty & coveted. I have been away too long. Or misused the gift of tongues once again. The ink spilled over everything & dampened the feathers; I say it like it's an excuse.

He looks down at his feet. Recognizing the effort but not the words. Too much time he says, shrugging, kicking at a soda can in the parking lot. I can only reach out so far to begin again & so I must, but only with the most recent, & walk backwards like a wizard might, always living tomorrow like it was yesterday (this is how you grow young, I thought) But you must avoid the wood & the sword, the betrayal & the lake).

On Thursday, I argued with an orthodox priest. Oh really? Yeah. we disagreed on the nature of light & hell. I could feel in me, the rushing restlessness, the need to understand, & He (the priest) looked at me blankly unhelpful & all he can say is, get this: "Go easy on us. We're only human." I mean he gives me a book that speaks about holiness, but in his conservative eagerness, feels warmth for the tumble of ink between these two bindings. Ha-ha - got 'im. No. It's a twilight of an instant, that is one suspended between two lights: first inbred & the other adopted through the skull. Yet, that book (which I, of course, brought home) confirmed everything I had already said, and battled for in his presence. Funny things, books. You say. You can read anything you want into them.

But I ask, devastated & disappointed: How can you possibly hope to argue anything truly important with a priest who has never experienced God?

There is a depth to everything, you say even the longing -- and a distance I still cannot quantify. True, you and I -- we can speak for hours, till faces billow, turning colors & moods & melancholias into burnished copper vessels, green where the breath of the universe touched its airy fingers. Like the springs & cogs in that wind-able watch-clock heart: any minute now & the hour might spill the mystery of devotions you are too stubborn to fulfill,  the hidden art of glancing into all of it as a singularity. This love is worth seeking, it's a longing to fill up all us hollow men, (be patient, we're only human). The stuff'd veracity of being stilled by graces & muses matching voices to heavens which exist, perhaps, but only in the spirit of the matter that we're after.

Effused, the light is buried in matter, yet shines through every particle, it's the law of the divine measurement, strung up from spider's webs, the same way it is in our sinews. Two by two, one more jeweled-over with dew & the glancing blow of the gaze that hones every thread spun, connects every tireless one.

Pleased with yourself, You nod as if to music, a momentary minuet in G and as if agreed, a truce called, we begin walking back the way we came, the wilderness before the field.

Author's Note

so rough. be kind.

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

be kind? how could i be unkind to a secret?

[Emily B]

I think it is exactly what it should be. So glad your voice has blessed us with something new to read.