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Into Darkness

--1-- Descent
Sometimes when I am breathing carefully, not taking for granted the complexities of that filling and emptying, how molecule by invisible molecule I touch the cottonwood tree quivering in the breeze, sometimes I feel a descent. I sink into an image of darkness. I descend into soil. God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness because darkness was already with God. Like breath, it didn't need to be created - both were in God before the beginning. My breathing is sometimes like this, a trail I follow, a river path after flash flooding: willow and brush all tangled and crossed, all pointing in the direction of water's flow. I follow this breathing, this thin strand that comes out of my body and connects me to the world. I think of Beth's cornflower seeds, which breathe even in the dark of their packets at the store. Though they need light, the seeds would burn up if we threw them into the sun, but hidden in the soil, separated from the light, they sprout. They emerge like hands, heels together, palms up ready to catch moisture, light, and the whole breathing world, and funnel it down into the roots, just beginning to reach out. Sometimes when I am breathing carefully, this is what I am.

--2-- Only This
In the beginning there was no time
and nothing to measure it with
there was only this

Darkness closed in around itself
wonderful and perfect
In the darkness there was breathing
it moved through the dark
part darkness and part breath

In the breathing there were waters
over which the breath moved
In the waters there was no violence
as creation had not begun
there was motion but no matter

In the beginning there was radiation
moving in all directions at once

--3-- Only the Trinity
"The effects could be called
unprecedented,
magnificent, beautiful, stupendous,

and terrifying. The whole country
was lighted by a searing light
with the intensity many times
that of the midday sun. It was golden,

purple, violet, gray, and blue.

First the air blast pressed hard against people,
to be followed almost immediately
by the strong, sustained awesome

roar which warned of doomsday

and made us feel we puny things
were blasphemous
to dare tamper with the forces

heretofore reserved for the Almighty."

(General Farrell, Deputy to Manhattan
Project Commander General Leslie
Groves: On the Trinity Test, July 16, 1945)

Almost

Seeing a tuft of fur on the highway shoulder
--brick-red, brown, blackened by oil
and sun-struck me wordless, numb.
An appropriate hollowness
filled the morning, growing as heat
spread into shade. Somehow,
without knowing when
or how, we opened the door
to death and now it inhabits us.
Your colleague's husband. Genevieve
killed at noon by a drunk driver.
The birds we draw to feeders, one's head
picked to a small, white ball.
Even the kitten we adopted
from the dairy farmer. Grief eroded me then
in ways I never knew, so I tried to reason:
She was just an animal
-as if you are anything else.
We knew it was coming
-who wrote 'our steps are brief'?
All we could do was fill ourselves
with cheap wine and the night
with talk of other encounters.
Death is a feast we taste only in portions.
Kitten, father, sister, grandfather, cousin.
You cried yourself to sleep
imagining being left without me.
All morning, I drove with the taste of loss
in my mouth until passing the golf course:
a row of three Mountain Ash trees
with their orange fruit glowing in the light
- somehow the beauty of it
broke me. Tears salt-burned in my eyes.
At lunch we held each other,
swaying in a hug that will not
last forever, not even in memory.