The Air Sounds Like

The Air Sounds Like

(“When the Lord saw her, he felt sorry for her and said, ‘Don’t cry.’” Luke 7:13)

We scratch our heads so often; we question the days and argue with clouds.
We debate the death the looms above the final step for every journey.
We come home from this vacation, we return from that trip to fish,
we pull into the driveway half wondering how we’ll get in the front door;

But one day we will not return. A journey where the footprints simple stop.
No one computed the demanded time, and so our fathers and grandfathers still
have lemonade far into the afternoon, while
a mother and daughter have been parted since the second full moon the first child knew.

“It’s alright, it’s ok,” we say. We know the end of the trail
appears somewhere between one inhale of forest and the last exhale
of goodbye. If there is a half circle gathered around our final moment,
there is waiting, watching. Every vision is a solid stare, fast and focused
upon the nose and mouth and silence (undemanded) fills what might be lost.
One unintended, brings his fingers to the back of his head and scratches just
as everyone concludes the end has come. Mouth and lungs, eyes and fingers
are in suspended animation. The first, second, third, then three at once, then
uncounted
the tears spread around the room without blush or hesitation.

Only few notice the eyes that see unseen. In the silence, the solace is quieter still.
The hand, perhaps, that escorted the waiting one across the final precipice,
was the one who waited now, to dry eyes and find the middle of every room
where grief has swallowed a family, a church, a town or nation. He is
the exact center measured from every tear dropped from eye to earth.

He is the exact reason the last exhale happens beyond our hearing;
He is the exact substance, image, feeling of each one in the room and
the One who made each one in the room: He is the exact. Whether

He touches the bodies of the dead, or the brooding of the living, He touches them
with life,
with feeling,
with breath that leaves the air sound like the first day of birthing over again.