Good Neighbors: 8. Eight Days, Nine Yards, at the Eleventh Hour

Standing before the empty tomb,
we see its emptiness and weep.

What happened here?
Who can say?

Loss and abandonment hang in the air.

A parent died;
a friend left;
a mentor migrated,
leaving no forwarding address;
the plane crashed,
and we cannot rest until we know why,
for how can there be closure
under the cloud of the unknown?

We all wait,
and what we await
is an eighth day,
when the emptiness can be lifted
—or filled—
by possibility,
so we can move on.

When will our eighth day come?

If we could move,
we might
attempt a full nine yards
to achieve ten,
or, who knows, even more.

The empty tomb
is meant to make us turn to one another,
for solace and for support,
to reconnect and renew.

On that day,

on the day when we break through
—the grief,
            the pain or paralysis—
when we find one another
and work together
—to be with and for one another—
                        only when,
at that eleventh hour of our collective soul
                        only then
            might we truly be known

            as Good Neighbors.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This poem is the final prayer and postlude of a cycle based on the so-called Seven Penitential Psalms. The subtitle of the cycle is “Psalms from the Streets”.

Meditations in Fast Times: 14. grasping at words

                14.

grasping at words,
gasping at my inability to seize them,
this is the fevered dream from which one awakes
in the middle of any dark night.

meanings, musings and poetry taunt,
they clang in my ears noisily and haunt
the nocturnal halls
in those hours meant to sustain
and refresh.

true music is sensed
beyond the thicket of my confusion,
partially heard, felt in fragments
dropping like leaves from trees that overhang,
but these traces do not form and clarify into song,
at least, not into the song of my salvation. 

the best words are winged chariots;
they rise up into the night sky,
adhering to the planets and the stars;
after a time, they crumble with laughter,
falling gently as dust to earth,
where they walk together,
gathering flowers,
stopping to help the fallen child,
and inform the wisdom of birds.

my ungainly chariots are empty; 

all have been flung into the sea,
where they are swallowed up;
they sink to the depths like stones.

I cry out,
but only a hot wind is heard;
it blows like a curtain around me,
an isolating cloak of despair.

my thoughts manage to form a plea,
echoing through empty pathways,
pooling and circling downward
toward the fathomless drain:

please help me break through the silence that swallows me up!

please help me break through to life!

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen