I remember the loneliness
of looking across Boston harbor
on that cold morning.

It gripped me
an invisible shroud.
It was an insulation
from consolation
and inspiration
without joy.

I remember the feel of the moist wind
sweeping across the waves
passing through me
as if I weren’t there
a ghost lingering alone
not even in the company of
John Adams or Nathaniel Green
or any other revolutionary.

No revolution in me in this illness
not even evolution.
Just stasis
stalled.

Six weeks if this
quite enough for a lifetime.
I want to forget
but I should remember
remember the lessons
of dependence
being quiet
reading in silence
being still
and at rest.

Since those days
in that weak and lonely haze
I have discovered
a God who needs nothing from me
a faith alive even in dormancy
like the elm in the back yard
stripped of all signs of green life
but standing there in its dark mystery
gnarled branches reaching outward and upward
alive waiting patiently
resting in the sweet prospect
of spring.

“Mystery in Waiting,” Copyright © 2018 by Glenn Currier

01/31/2018

Author's Note: The memory of standing at the edge of Boston Harbor looking across the water at the city came out of the blue. But I went with the image and it brought me, as poems will do, to places I had not intended to speak of. But there it is. I was relating to the first stanza of V. Blake's most recent poem and how it described in another way, what I had been feeling during my recent illness. But it is good to be arriving again in the world of "the living."

Posted on 01/31/2018
Copyright © 2024 Glenn Currier