Tuesday, June 15, 2010

I Kings 19:1-15a 

Still Small Voice

A man reported life in the eye 
of an F-5 tornado
one Good Friday caught out
on the ground hugging a tree.

The first wall in a great upslant
had taken away,
sparing man and tree.
The second would lay down its burden in missiles:
but between what was and coming 
of the incommodious affairs of shattered Earth,
all was taken up
in the face of unspeakable light
as a 3 bedroom starter hovered briefly overhead 
before going to heaven.

The silence rose like Jesus.

On another day
Elijah, wedged between the slabs of Horeb
and the same rattlings of the world,
drank of that deep:
neither was he ever quite here again.

We dream of that place,
but cannot find it,
somewhere inside the fields of slaughter
we do not understand
like Aunt Rachel's cell voice from the World Trade Center
between the flames,
wrapped in quiet.
 

© 2010 Andy Gay