Soul searching

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Soul searching

Seven religions she had tried before finding her Christ, said she.  Yet
the silvery shaking of the plane unsettled her spirit. Not to worry, said I, the non- believer. 
Or, perhaps, believer:   in fallible human plans, in chaos, the finitude of feeling. On Sunday out in the countryside, I saw it: pastel blue box wedged between cornfields and silos, a crazy pastor shrieking and shaking its walls. Out on the dirt roads, the rain was beginning to fall and there was the world, cracked wide open, and us , racing right by, some last-minute stint to recover
the wild.      Layers of fear falling away.
Like the blond lady on the plane, who needed such assuage.
Christ, she assured me, had loved her back.
He had even forgiven the tattoo.


   - Miriam Adelman

The Hours

 (For Joana)

 

There are young hearts that don’t resist.
Eyes wide open to come-what-may, a sprightly
blue vestige of a world before the end
of innocence. But there is so much more,
so much that doesn´t fit into closets or
schema, so much to spring the coils, or burst
even the most carefully sewn garments -
    the ones made painstakingly, one hand stitch at a time-
at the seams. There are boats that navigate
past the end of a flat horizon.
And some of the kindred who depart too early
just so the rest, the ones who are left
here holding down the fort, can remember
what keeps us