10 Minutes of Clarity

 10 Minutes of Clarity

(“Our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope.” 2 Thessalonians 2:16)

During the first half of the movie I had
10 minutes of clarity.
It was a French movie set in the 70s
and the subtitles kept me engaged.
For half the time of a good nap
the ocean swept over me without drowning me,
the loves and pains, the stains and steeps were
all the same. They did not disappear, but were
clearly there in my psyche; fish and plankton,
all a part of the biome of over 60 years
of mortality.

I breathed easy. Surgical incisions were insistent
but not consuming. Friends I hoped would call,
didn’t. But I remained undisturbed. I could see that
minutes or days beyond my control were simply the passing
of weather systems out of reach and unrelated
to my ability to swim.

I had not chosen this place, this fleeting vision. It
surprised me like a warm shower out of a clear sky
on a Thursday afternoon. I could not capture the clouds
any more than I could stop the waves that gently rocked
my soul.

It was 10 minutes. Then my anxiety; every shivering thought,
every regret over reckless words, every impossible repentance,
every lead-covered silence, every solitary song I never meant
to sing alone.
Every one of them, short-circuited within, powered my skin,
my heart, my lungs, my head and threatened to trip the fuse
I thought
was out of danger during my

10 minutes of clarity.