Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
—Psalm 42.7
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
—Isaiah 43.2
Hurricane winds have torn the air itself apart.
The sea and all its deep is heaped upon you.
The sod of grief laid down in silence buries you.
The diagnosis weighs, the fear
floods your veins, your heart, your lungs.
What you must do, a swarm of locusts,
noisily consumes your life.
You sigh, you weep, and sigh.
In the dark waters you pass through,
the devastated ruins where you lived,
I will be there.
Even as night closes it is my arms you feel
or do not feel.
I hold you, even now, I hold you close.
The sodden air, the trough of sorrow
open to the sky, the pleading heart,
is me, steadfast in you.
You will go on, in the tiny ark of my heart,
and after long enough for much to die
in this world and the next
we will begin again.
In the naked fields
birds return.
____________________
Weather Report
Forty days
beyond whose floods
new things emerge.
One hundred percent chance of rain
and bows.
—September 19, 2018