Lightning likes it when we reach up to touch the sky.
And, grounded as we are
lucky in keeping our electricity contained
and kept a safe distance from the epicenter or eye
It is miraculous we survive, sometimes, like a flash-
in the way that it is so unexpected, sudden
and unbelievable-until it occurs to you.
Miraculum, as in the object of wonder.
It happened to me on a Thursday in February,
just past the noon hour.
I was punched in the chest-
windswept out with words-choking on this
wonder-full revelation.
Desperately I tried to grasp my breath
midair and stuff it back in where it stings
and has been so hollow
and in wrestling with this
it may have sounded like crying or rain.
But the dam lids overflowed
and I struggled to compose a normal sound
while my son grabs a beverage from the fridge behind me,
I exhale-steadily
as if blowing out a wish.
It was a video I was supposed to watch, assigned, as in destiny.
The woman spoke of her life, nothing like mine.
Then she spoke of suicide and asked why, why, why-
she was not asking for forgiveness.
She traded her story with a Buddhist,
the words he chose to frame her parable were:
"You chose Them", I coughed, she repeated, “you Chose them.”
The accusation blinding, hence the tears we blinked back.
It changes Here.
Where things are twisted
around &
you break the descending karmic chain
and begin Free fall.
This is when my heart plummeted like lead into my pelvis,
my rib cage closed, and I gasped one last deep breath
before being born once again
on a Thursday in February.
“This is the miracle that happens every tie to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
“Everybody holds the possibility of a miracle.”
-Elizabeth David
“I’ve never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.”
-Michel de Maontaigne
Painting by Mårten Eskil Winge (1825-1896), 'Thor's Battle' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
