It Doesn’t Always Add Up

It Doesn’t Always Add Up

(“I will show him how much he will have to suffer because of Me.” Acts 9:16)

It doesn’t always add up.
The spirit fills us; we laugh until our
sides ache.
The music spins us dizzy until we fall onto
the floor.
The food fills us; the wine tells us more than
we knew before.
The evening stills us into quiet contemplation;
the night air covers us like a comforter, a down blanket
to deposit our thoughts.

And we think, after days like that,
everything will wind up either
odd or even.
The sun will rise on time,
the sky will mine the aquamarine from the
rivers below.
Then,

Though there was no explosion, everything imploded.
The compass pointed north, of that we were certain,
but the storms blew hard from the south and the west,
the thunder drowned the bluegrass, the fiddle, and the mandolin.
We walked backward against the wind and saw the last
banquet where we had been silly like children.

No one told us that how things begin is rarely how they end.
We learned it for ourselves. We sank our teeth into forbidden
explanations.

Our calculations betrayed us. We learned we were still
only dust.
We found the letter written that we had never seen.
It eased our tiny suffering when we read:
“All the pain and the laughter are in my hands.”

We spoke of love and followed the storm to the place
we ended and
the place we began.