The Hole in the Sky

The Hole in the Sky

(“…love one another earnestly with all your heart.” 1 Peter 1:22b)

I must apologize; I mistook the hole in the skies
as sabotage. But it looked like a hole on the frozen lake
augured for ice fishing and attracting northern and walleye.

But I looked again and there it was, a square, directly above my head,
where the azure had been sawn with equal sides. I would not have
noticed it,
but I was watching hummingbirds hover just opposite my face
and ascend like tiny bottle rockets to the uppermost limb
of the old walnut tree in the yard. Then two flakes
of cottonwood snow
drifted higher by and I followed their floating trajectory.
One dipped and circled the tree and rose again toward the logging
road behind my house.
The other rose on the currents like the ascension.

That is when it appeared, this grave dug in the sky.
How was I to interpret such a vision? Who would explain
such a thing?
I waited for an angel, I waited for a messenger,
I slept and waited for a dream, I woke and waited
for a vision. But none would come.

And the sky stayed punctured. And, afraid the whole earth
would leak through the hole, I panicked and turned up the heat.

I am only alive to describe this to you because
nothing happened to deflate the blue above or the
green below. It was just a hole and nothing more.

The few who saw it too presented their theories and
dissertations to a panel of judges at a table strewn with
flags and bibles. The first said the moon had broken the sky.
The second said it was the end of rainbows as we know it.
The third, oh the third was persuasive. An act of God,
to be sure, (except, the author interjects, wasn’t the
pre-hole sky an act of God too?) An act of God, he said,
dropped the mic, and put up a tent just outside of town
to wait until we all got sucked up through the hole or
fell into the one next time that would take us to hell.

I am still unsure why the sky was punctured. I am not sure
it has stayed that way.
I know what I saw, and my testimony is true.
I do not know its significance, only that I wanted to
share it with you and
maybe call some friends to talk about it over drinks tonight.
None of us know much anyway.