And, finally I see

There right in front of me

Waiting peacefully

Was a bright new day

~Athey Thompson

when the wise ones show up, they play…

inquiry for today~ find your way today….

a million miles to go so slowly…

Sweet Jesus, talking

his melancholy madness,

stood up in the boat

and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.

So everybody was saved

that night.

But you know how it is

when something

different crosses

the threshold — the uncles

mutter together,

the women walk away,

the young brother begins

to sharpen his knife.

Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes

like the wind over the water —

sometimes, for days,

you don’t think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,

after the multitude was fed,

one or two of them felt

the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight

before exhaustion,

that wants to swallow everything,

gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,

as they are now, forgetting

how the wind tore at the sails

before he rose and talked to it —

tender and luminous and demanding

as he always was —

a thousand times more frightening

than the killer storm.

~Mary Oliver