A Venue you Habited
(“The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands.” John 3:35)
Have you ever returned to a chosen space, a venue you habited like the moon
in its cycles? Have you glanced upon the stone where once you sat
to abbreviate the world’s long pages? Your eye scanned the horizon;
The west was endless from the butte’s vantage; a river running and rising
as June supplied its capacity from the peaks well past August.
The east was a yellow hillside wedge with jonquil and bluebell punctuation.
Sometimes the children were occupied with hikes and journeys while your
heart,
aligned with the routine,
found comfort in the pattern as all life finds in the seasons.
So, for 20 years you visited, weeks divided by two;
for 20 years you sat and painted your methods;
for 20 years you kept a liturgy of hours, your prayer rope
a comfort when thoughts twirled like gutters and words
echoed against the abyss.
Then came the pain. Unruly, you continued your routine.
But the pain allowed less contemplation as it captured your
best assets and imprisoned them well beyond the reach of your
shortened range.
The pain stayed. Five years in the experts ran out of tricks,
the rabbits had escaped, the wand was broken, and the magician’s cape
was a threadbare anachronism while you grabbed the theater rails
to exit the building when your last hope when up in flames.
The stone still sits atop the butte, the river still swells in
summer’s comma before the fall. But you
Are adrift, the doldrums have stopped every measure of time.
You wonder what power, now eight years unpinned from
the calendar’s rhythm, might stir the waters again,
send you to the one unchanging habit that defined
Your delineation from every other footprint maker.
A Father, you hoped to accelerate your best to leave your
children arcs and panoramas before you left to rest.
