Light in the Tempest An epithalamion Like the disciples, you’ve felt bone-snapping air . . . plunge from the eastern mountains, tumbling into the Galilee. The chop heaves three lengths more than the height of your body; the water’s temperature drops; pleadings rise from the alveoli in your lungs, distend the back of your throat. Tests always begin like this: Cold wind, even colder waves, your own screams leaving you in the last rasp of belief. But then you listen and watch and yearn and wait. You sense something stronger than tides below sea-level. You raise your head peering into the abyss of melancholy and madness. You let go of trying to grab the dangling oar from the back of the boat as the wind starts to shift, as the lake turns from squall to blue, as clouds lift, gradually, your wet body gives way to the gentle rebuke in His voice once the light shines through touching everything you never knew you could see.
Mark D. Bennion‘s poems have appeared in Christianity & Literature, Dappled Things, Spiritus, U.S. Catholic Magazine, Windhover, and other journals. His most recent book is Beneath the Falls: poems (Resource Publications, 2020). Currently, he teaches writing and literature courses at Brigham Young University-Idaho.
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