This Day Has Drained Me

This Day Has Drained Me

(“’Don’t be alarmed,’ he told them. ‘You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they put him.’” Mark 16:6)

Today was dusty, though the sky was
airier
than normal.
It’s not up to me to
judge,
what with the law of relativity,
but I’m not sure I can break even,
or that evening breaks me.

I’ve waited for angels to pull me aside,
widen my view,
point out the empty place in the tomb.
Most days it is merely damp.

Not that I don’t hear the simple syllables
that insist
there is more,
much more than this.
It is all the other voices I’ve collected
and the dark strings of connected incidentals
that have swarmed my silence.

There still is a narrator that insists,
an immovable rock or island,
a force exists that resists my localized
view of things. How can this inner cavern quench
such glorious light,
how can a few chemicals in the brain
convince me the sun does not shine.

Whether it’s the smoke from the forests
or the haze from the factories,
this gravity will not let me spin out of control
even when the whole day has been wasted.

He is not here
(they
say)
and I nod in assent.
But if I understand the angels rightly,
(or the record of their descant)
I may find him on the next turn
down the road.

For now, I cut and paste
words and phrases
trying to edit my life.