(“But immediately Jesus spoke to them,
saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’” Matthew 14:27
Some storms are diseases,
deadly or benign.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
long for
what was subtracted by the pain.
Who will hear the anguish, who will cross the line
between judgement and smokescreens,
who will resign their executable proverbs,
who will sit while the blizzard blinds every
direction out of the isolation. Who will be the
echo, who will assuage this flirtation with madness?
The highway was lost in the white-out and blowing
snow.
The bearings were lost, the directions frozen against
the windshield and the ice grabbed the jeep from
underneath and behind.
He would rather steer clear of deer than
inch through the drifts and snakes where the
asphalt broke more metal and steel the winter before.
If he slowed down it only meant
longer on the frozen path that whistled and cawed
like laughing ghosts. He held the wheel tight.
His knuckles were white. And the ditches were
camouflaged, the ditches were the dump grounds where
vehicles rolled like dogs in their sleep. Six inches from
the ditch on the right,
then six from the one on the left;
the road would not let go of him,
no one heard his voice and fear. The road
was clearly his enemy.
We slide from one storm to the backdoor of
a stranger’s house. We are slick in the ways
we substitute armaments for fear. We sweep away
what everyone knows,
so no one can see that
we all cry out in the storm alone. We all
cry out. We all deny the moans when face
to face
with the barely brave.
So we wait for the echo, we wait for the voice,
we wait for the choice to be afraid on the road.
We move in silence, we sit alone, we dig the oars deeper,
we weep or break the wine glasses on the kitchen floor.
And this, we simply implore and want to hear the
words again that only the frightened transcribe:
“It is I. It is I. Do not be afraid.”
