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Learning Late

Why, love is easy, you discover
after a lifetime blocking that route
with boulders and trunks of trees:
simply remove debris you put there
yourself, and the road is level,
straight to the horizon.

Bless us, it is better to learn
just before the sun sets what day it is,
than not at all.  Impious old
Uncle Charles took Jesus as Savior
mere minutes before he died.
Pastor was very happy.

Knowledge of what a sparrow means
by singing earns you no interest,
so acquire it only when you’re ready.
Something the young don’t realize:
late learnings lack years to harden
into dogma, the way arteries harden.

Mistakes make good students—
and that school is always in session.
It isn’t necessary that you graduate:
even the teachers are still learning.

Some say the greatest lessons await 
after Pastor throws dirt on the coffin.
How about that for learning late.

Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. Recent work appears in Poem, The Main Street Rag, and U.S. 1 Worksheets.  His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.

The Invocation

The man pulled the car over and parked. He had spent the day—the last several days, actually—in Saskatoon. On Thursday he had flown in from Toronto to plan his mother’s funeral. Now it was late Saturday, and he was sitting outside an old country church hours away from the city.

He hadn’t thought about his mother much in recent years. In fact, it had been about a decade since he’d last seen her. Oh, he had made sure she was well looked after: the home had very positive reviews. But her dementia was too much for him. One day—after years of visiting this crazy old woman who looked like, but wasn’t, his mother—he simply stopped.

It wasn’t a deliberate decision, exactly. He just never got around to booking the next ticket. By the time he realized it had been more than a year since he last saw her, he figured it was better this way. He moved on.

Her death caught him off guard as a result. He had said goodbye a long time ago. But being back in Saskatchewan, making arrangements for the funeral… That was different. It brought back memories he had long ago buried.

The funeral, such as it was, had taken place that morning in Saskatoon. It was a small affair—no pastor, no hint of anything religious. Few people knew his mother in recent years, and even fewer bothered to attend. In all, the event took forty-five minutes.

That left the man with time to spare, as his return flight wasn’t until the next afternoon. But he was restless. There was something he needed to do. Somewhere he needed to be. He couldn’t sit still, kept fidgeting with his keys.

At last he made a decision: he would spend his remaining hours in the province driving out to see his childhood home one last time.

Only, when he got there the house was gone. Of course it was gone, he thought. It had probably been demolished thirty years ago after his mother moved to the city. Stupid. Hours wasted. He should have realized.

He meant then to go back to the city. A few minutes later, when he reached the crossroads, he knew he should turn left—that was the direction of the highway. Instead, he turned right. Now here he was, parked at the corner of two gravel roads in the middle of nowhere, staring out at the church of his youth. 

He tried to think. Why had he come here? Some shadow of a memory seemed to be playing at the corner of his mind, some… Thing… that if he could just retrieve he knew would make sense of everything.

He waved his hand to dispel the thought, like brushing aside a fly.

He examined the church from his window more clinically now. He was looking for… what, exactly? A chance to reconnect with his family roots? He snorted. Church had been his father’s thing, not his mother’s. After his father died, they just stopped going. He had been in his teens. What could he possibly be looking for here?

The man got out of the car and walked across the grass towards the church. It showed its age: the exterior, once gleaming white, was coated with years of dirt. The cross on top of the small bell tower was slightly askew. The sign read “Holy Cross Lutheran,” and indicated the years the congregation had opened and closed.

So the church is dead too, he thought—long dead. He wasn’t surprised. It had been a tiny congregation when he had lived here decades earlier. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to pack it in.

Still, he thought, it isn’t completely abandoned. He could see that the grass had been mowed fairly recently. Someone was still watching over the place. Maybe people still used the church once in a while for community events. Maybe weddings.

He decided to try the door. The wood was swollen at the bottom, but it came open after a firm tug. He stepped inside.

It was exactly as he remembered it. The altar, the pulpit, the baptismal font, the pews… they were all there. An open Bible lay on the lectern. Candlesticks still stood on the altar.  Tucked away in the front left was the old pump organ he’d tortured more than once as a child. And over the whole scene a large crucifix loomed, brutal and demanding, sunlight from the window behind bathing it in fire.

He glanced to the left as he entered the sanctuary and was surprised to see the back wall still held several frames, most of them crooked. His baptism and confirmation photos must be among them. He turned away.

The furnishings were all as he remembered them, but the sanctuary had nevertheless aged. A fine coat of dust covered everything, and an unpleasant musty smell permeated the room. A large dark stain—presumably the result of a leaky roof—took up a good portion of the aisle floor. The wood creaked beneath his feet.

He took a seat in the fourth pew on the right without considering what he was doing. It had been the family pew. It seemed appropriate somehow. Then, he waited.

He waited ten minutes. Twenty. The sun outside began to set, and the light passing through the dirty windows cast a golden haze over everything. Thirty minutes passed. He felt anew the sense that he was forgetting something; somewhere in the back of his mind a dim recollection was struggling to form. A shadow from the cross began to spread across the floor.

He sighed. What was he doing here? What was he expecting? “A sign?” He asked it aloud, mockingly, and the sound of his own voice startled him. He hadn’t realized how quiet the church had been.

The sun sank lower, and the cruciform shadow grew.

He sat in silence a minute more, and then shook his head. Whatever he was searching for, he decided, it was not here. The man rose and began his way to the door.

Suddenly there was a crash behind him, and he spun around. One of the candlesticks had fallen from the altar and was now rolling slowly across the floor.

The man gasped and glanced wildly around. Blood rushed to his ears. His heart pounded.

The candlestick came to a stop. The man stood perfectly still, listening, waiting…

Nothing.

He swallowed. “Damn mice,” he muttered at last.

He glanced nervously at his watch, then at the door. He licked his lips. He had to go. Yes, he had to go now. It was still several hours’ drive back to Saskatoon. He should leave.

He looked back towards the altar. The shadow from the cross was stretching towards him with surprising rapidity.

He took a small step back. The shadow advanced. Several more steps. The shadow kept pace. His breath came quicker.

He reached the entryway and his hand darted for the knob. He pushed but the door stuck at the base. Suddenly the shadow rushed him, enveloping his feet, and the man panicked. He flung himself at the door. It gave way and he tumbled onto the grass outside.

He ran to his car. He left the church. He did not look back.

Mathew Block is editor of The Canadian Lutheran magazine and communications manager for the International Lutheran Council. His writing has been featured in a variety of publications, both sacred and secular, including First Things, The National Post, Converge Magazine, The Mythic Circle, and more.

IN QUEST OF THE SANGRAAL


The carmine liquid gleams in shallow cracks.
A few collect it, find it sweet, then sour, 
then realize that it has kissed their brains
and made them more alert to minds of light.

But soon an institution forms to keep
this lifeblood as a regulated drink,
a necessary structure in a world
where felons bleed themselves, their servants or
their pigs, and sell it on the road in jars.
It's then the royal blood sinks out of sight,
a memory revered, no longer known.

How to manipulate the world (without
reshaping what we are) to bring it back,
the same old rural scenery of brooks
and holy people in their laundered wool
imbibing simple life from heaven’s wells?
How shall we hold our tongues to speak aright;
or cross our fingers, toes or eyes to snare
this sacred cup we somehow cast aside?

John J. Brugaletta is professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught classes on Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer, as well as the writing of poetry. He now lives in retirement on the northern coast of California.

A reminder that Amethyst Press is launching Diana Durham’s beautiful poetry collection, LABYRINTH, at 7-8pm UK time, 2-3pm EST today. Free online zoom event which you can register for by Eventbrite. One attendee picked at random will get a free Labyrinth book and tote!

click here to register

About Labyrinth:

The poems in Labyrinth trace Diana’s psychic journey out of England and into New England, and how that forced her to grow and expand her understanding of herself, and of the shadow and the gifts of both cultures. 

Praise for Labyrinth:

“Diana writes with a particular crystalline clarity suffusing both her poetry and prose: it is her essential expression. At the same time, her philosophical cast of mind reaches the highest level as a result of her many years of training and inner work.”

—Jay Ramsay, author of Kingdom of the Edge, Monuments. Described by Caduceus magazine as “England’s foremost transformation poet.”

“I loved the light in this one! And that slow large wave that moves through much of your poetry….where I end up existing in something huge, like a massive sense of space..” 

—Jude Repar, Attunement Practitioner and healer.

“Beautiful—your work speaks to me.” 

—Iain McGilchrist, author ofThe Master & His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Opa! To The Evermore of The Great Somewhere

So.   Now we are old.   I see you
from a distance in the produce aisle 
checking the blackness of the grapes
the softness of the pears
   and I think
Oh! that's my old hat man

as you ramble off with the cart
searching for fresh kale.
Now we are ripe.

I used to dream about you 
climbing over mountains without
me at the bottom trying to get out the words
   wait up!

But.   You are on the other side before I can speak.

Once.   I saw you waving goodbye
from the train's window
me running beside the tracks
trying to catch you.

But.   The dream that roots in me 
is one of disembodied love 
more grave than a slaughtering of horses
   in deep grief 
I come upon a cottage in the forest
knowing you are dead
But.   There you are in the kitchen waiting 
raising a glass of wine in opa! to our reunion.
   I love you so much 
I am weeping on my morning pillow
you snoring bawdily beside me.

I would wake from the dead for you
would stay with the brute truths of our bodies--
the gouty feet
the thinning hairs
these stiffening fingers, a bundle of sticks--
to forgo all the perfections of the divine.

Yes.   We are old now.   But not older than dirt you say.

No.   Not older than dirt.
But.   The dust storms circle.

If.   You board the train without me

   wait  

on the platform where you arrive

   I will be

on the next train coming.

Stephanie K. Merrill has poems recently published in The Rise Up Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in UCity Review and in Moist Poetry Journal. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a retired high school English teacher. She lives in Austin, Texas. 

Sunrise from St Michael’s Tower


Daybreak,
tangerine bands already streak
across stretched out sky.

If the heavens do speak of glory
then surely here,
where each cold stone remembers 
the caress of angels
and every breeze is a song.

But I have been in church lately
and found nothing.

Below
the fields lie shimmering
and willow steeples call across the floodwater.
The dawn seeps upwards
and ink-blot clouds begin to show
and I think I might walk,

weightless and unashamed
across the meniscus of this new day.

Alice Watson is a new poet, a priest, and a mother to young children based in Northamptonshire, England. She is inspired by the natural world and her faith. She has had work published in Earth and Altar and Dreich. She chats about faith, ministry, and feminism (amongst other things) on Twitter @alicelydiajoy.

Little Prophets Everywhere


Who wants to write a poem about fire?
when you can just build one      stacking the phrases 
in logs      leaving spaces      between      for the breathing.

Either way it's all embers for the art of getting cooked.
Last night my father came to me in a dream. 
He said, "Don't worry about the world. Just keep your own bed warm."

I want to believe The Book of James (William, that is) 
& the upward progression of souls      traveling somewhere widely
among wise spirits      & I want to accept that this body will not survive the journey.

I try to abandon restlessness      to live among the ferns and the mosses
who tell me      over & over      by slow degrees
the few good & glowing truths.
 

Stephanie K. Merrill has poems recently published in The Rise Up Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in UCity Review and in Moist Poetry Journal. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a retired high school English teacher. She lives in Austin, Texas. 

Diana Durham, Labyrinth (Amethyst Press, 2021)

Labyrinth – US purchases

Book free tickets for Labyrinth’s online launch on Thursday October 7th 7-9pm BST (2-3pm EST) via eventbrite

Labyrinth, Diana Durham’s new poetry collection, is a search for connection, a search for finding a way into a new land. The roots of belonging, the familiar markers of entry are no longer there. Walking the path of the labyrinth – a metaphor for the collection – becomes a way of finding the physical and spiritual centre where the epiphany of connection can take place. In her introductory essay Diana Durham writes about the circumstances in which these poems came to be written when she moved from England to New Hampshire in America, where she was to live for over twenty years. Anyone who has been uprooted and transplanted from their own homeland can relate to the feelings of alienation which echo through many of the poems.

Apart from providing the background for the writing of the poems, the introduction also provides a description of Durham’s poetic process, a process that is individual to each and every poet, and in this case gives an interesting insight into how Durham approaches her craft.

Many of the poems in the collection come under the title of what I would call densely descriptive prose poetry, a genre which has been very popular among contemporary poets. It is well executed, its language meticulously crafted, and portrays the many landscapes of America as experienced by the poet. The urban blight of interstate highways and modern soulless towns is a constant leitmotif as the poet tries to reach beyond these to a deeper connection with the land they disfigure. “Mock Nothing” is a good example of a commentary on the ugliness of urban spaces and urban life with its sham emptiness. “Planet America” is another poem that speaks to attempts to fit into a foreign culture and land, find a way into the labyrinth and discover the transcendence at the centre. A poem such as “Lonely Climb Away from What We Love” captures something of the brittle hardness and anonymity of New York.

Yet the writing is punctuated with a continued quest for these outer layers to be stripped away and become transparent, for the veils between the worlds to thin so that they can open gateways onto a deeper reality, as in “Advent”:

the vanishing layers
of matter and thought
become like tissue, like lace 
lights threaded through the tree 
light on light - interstices 
gateways, advent.

“Philosopher’s Stone” depicts yet another such reaching towards the transcendent, “the thing itself, / shining / into the prism world”.

“At the Surface” contains more explicit personal emotion than many of the poems (“I remember this, this is the backward / plunge, the vertigo drop / the full glittering cascade / of reasons why there is no hope”), leading to a realization that the sought after transformation could come not through rage and struggle but through a “silent and fragile” power.

Many of the poems are strongly descriptive presenting pictures for the brain to conjure up. “Icing” and “The Snows of March” are examples of successful nature studies and word paintings. “San Diego Ladies” is a refreshing vignette, a nicely wrought image of the ladies who “talk in long, slow / sentences / like smoke from a slim, white / cigarette”. “At the Women’s Retreat” touchingly portrays a woman as “a soft half-statue / shined by water / her face / framed by the grey / brown curves of her hair / beautiful / in the light.” “Black River” is another particularly successful word painting.

“Gold” is one of the best poems in the collection with its interplay between gold – radiance – temple walls – facets – and space itself as a temple. The density of imagery really works here in evoking an inner landscape of the soul.

“Soft Scalpel” is another poem that stands out, offering a possible key to the collection in its concluding stanza:

This soft speaking
constellates geometries,
opens doorways into places
we have always known existed
yet, when our hearts needed so much 
filling, could not find.

The poet wanders through this labyrinth, seeking to “speak simply” (in “Clear Through to the Sun”), looking often, finding but rarely.

“Temple” is another standout for me, also for the musicality of its concluding lines which are a gem combining meaning and form:

remember when this temple gets defaced
our bodies are the fractals of its grace.

In the introduction the poet writes of how she finally came to heal her homesickness and alienation and find the transcendent connection she sought with the new land, as expressed in the poem “Labyrinth”. Yet it is the second poem in the “Labyrinth” sequence, which for me clearly evokes Glastonbury Tor, that speaks most strongly of the epiphanies generated by a connection to the spirit of place. There is a strong sense of the constant pull of the Old World, a deeper pull which grows no less.

For those who like finely crafted and densely packed descriptive poetry which reaches towards transcendent meaning this is a good collection to savour and unpack.

Irina Kuzminsky (DPhil, Oxon)

Book free tickets for Labyrinth’s online launch on Thursday October 7th 7-9pm BST (2-3pm EST) via eventbrite

In the Ashes

The ghosts are restless.  They wring the dishcloth of its moisture, scatter mothballs in the laundry room, smear the labels on stacks of cardboard boxes with their whispers.  

*****

She kneads the dough, feels the wet, clay-like substance stick to her fingers, gather beneath her ring. Scooping out some of the ashes, she sprinkles them over the dough like scattering the last few seeds from the packet. A chalky film clings to her fingers, embedding in the whorls of her skin. She examines the grey ash outlining her fingerprint in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. Warmth embraces her as she folds the ash into the bread, turning the pastry onto itself until it is all a homogenous ball. She drinks coffee and stares at the garden, knotweed and nettle overwhelming the drooping blossoms, as the dough rests, rises, rests again. Someday she will pull them, rip their roots from the earth, free the chrysanthemums and marigolds. But for now she does not have the energy to destroy anything that is so determined to live. 

*****

The ghosts squirm in delight at the smell of baked bread wafting through the house. They circle the dining room table, curl up in front of the empty fireplace, stretch out in the bathtub, waiting for the first cut of the knife through the thick crust: a satisfying crunch that does not come. 

*****

The cemetery is empty, bereft of visitors despite the autumn sunshine. She digs a small hole in front of the granite stone – simple in decoration, brief in verse: a name, two dates. Geese land in a nearby retention pond, honk their arrival before they splash into the muddy water. Placing the small urn into the ground, she sighs, repositions the metal jar, digs into the moist earth with her fingers until it fits perfectly level. She rips a chunk of the bread, dirt smudging the toasted crust, and eats. She cannot taste the ashes, cannot taste his body as he dissolves on her tongue. She swallows. Briefly she considers giving the rest of the bread to the geese, but decides against it. Burying the bread, the urn, she dusts off her hands and wonders if the ghosts will be disappointed.  

Shelly Jones, PhD (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Delhi, where she teaches classes in mythology, folklore, and writing. Her speculative work has previously appeared in Podcastle, New Myths, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @shellyjansen.

LOV

“Listen!” said the man dressed in all white.  “It happened like this . . .”

It was autumn, after Yom Kippur but before All Saints.  I had asked about falling in love.

“Listen!

“Once all children of God lived together in a great lake.  The lake was called Lov.

The lake was more beautiful than anything you could imagine.  At the height of day, bright light would sparkle from it; God’s children would float and splash among the light-drops.  At night, the moon would dip a finger in a long silver line upon its surface, and God’s children would laugh, sliding down the furrow of its shadow.

No one lived outside of Lov.  Men and women, elders and infants, young girls and boys knew only Lov as their home, their only state of existence.  They would dive deeper and deeper into Lov, soothed to their very cores by its velvety darkness.  Or they would move just beneath the surface of Lov, seeing the sky and the clouds and the birds through its softening lens.  

Everything slowed for them; the buoyancy of Lov made haste futile and fear unnecessary.  The lake provided all that was needed, sustenance and shelter, security and change.  Oh yes, change!  For the world outside, which those in Lov saw merely as a reflection of their own, was always changing.  In summer, a blue-green calm would prevail; it would grow warmer, and animals of varying sorts would approach the lake to drink and bathe. The children of God would laugh to themselves and pity them a little, as they did not know what it meant to be fully in Lov, but only came and went as their needs demanded.

In fall, fires that did not burn would begin to ignite themselves in the very heart of Lov — the children of God could see the colors reflected in the trees along the shore.  It was glorious!  For weeks and weeks on end, all Lov was ablaze in liquid scarlet, flowed in shimmering yellows.  Currents of orange and amethyst chased each other across the deep.  It was a time of flame, but not of harm, as the burning waters both consumed and caressed those awhirl in the passion of Lov.

And when winter came, it was welcomed.  Slowly the surface of the lake would crystalize; Lov would grow solid and strong.  The illusion that was the reflected world would cease for a time, and a translucent layer of stillness lay upon Lov like a familiar dream.  It was a season of sabbath, a deep retreat in which the children of God would see only the Lov that surrounded them, permeated them, and now transcended and bound them.  In winter they could not pretend, they could not rise above Lov’s surface, even for a few moments.  Once more, they were made to understand; they were not merely in Lov; they were within Lov.

Yes, there was land, too.  Had not the Creator separated the dry land from the waters on the third day?  But the story of Lov went back even further: “In the beginning all was empty and void; God’s spirit moved above the waters.”  The waters that filled the lake called Lov were just these, the primordial waters that preceded creation itself, the waters from which all things else rose  — the dry land, the rivers, the plants nourished by its mists, the living creatures teeming in its basins . . . and human beings  — human beings as well, made from the watered soil of the earth, and enlivened by the moist, deep breath of God.  For in order to breathe life into Adam, God first had to himself breathe in, to take within himself “the mist that rose from the earth to water it.”  And that mist, that water and breath was Lov.

So.  No one ever “fell in love,” not God, not people.  They were immersed in Lov, environed by Lov, created through Lov, eternal as Lov.

But . . .  you know the story.  It has been lived out in your presence, and in your own life a thousand times . . .

People like to play; they like to dare.  Today they tether their lives to a thread and walk where no paths could ever be, in the emptiness of interstellar space.  They still their heartbeats to a whisper, and venture in the shadowlands between death and life, until technology shocks them back to their side of the chasm.  Do you think any of this is new?  Don’t you recall Daedalus?  Or the builders of the Tower?

For sport, or curiosity, the children of God would sometimes try to come up out of the surface of the lake, to rise above the level of Lov.  Oh, it was one thing to float along with one’s head out of the water, or to wave an arm across the great lake to another who shared always this Lov with you.  Those were just little play-acts of daring, showing off — like riding a bicycle “no hands,” with the rest of you wrapped tight around the frame!  Occasionally, one or the other, in a demonstration of strength, would leap out of the waters like a dolphin, flapping their arms like a scared baby bird, and yelling!  But these, too, were like trampolinists who jump high, vaulters who trust their life to a narrow pole — for a moment.  Then, they are very glad that the trampoline’s surface is beneath them, that the pit is filled with mats to meet their fall.  After all, no one wants to remain suspended between heaven and earth, no one wishes to straddle a crossbar permanently.  And no one would ever really try to live outside of Lov, not for a few moments, let alone forever.  Would they?”

I shuffled my feet, one to the other.

“Eventually,” went on the man in white, “competition got the better of too many of the children of God.  It became a mark of distinction to pull oneself away from Lov and up onto the dry land.  At first, no one would stay more than a few moments, as the atmosphere apart from Lov was terrifying.  There was fire hidden everywhere, fire in the air, fire in the sand and on the wind.  It was excruciating to take even the fewest steps, impossible to breathe without burning. 

What was worse, this invisible fire was clearly the inveterate enemy of Lov, of the waters that preceded creation.  The moment one ventured away from Lov, the fire attacked from every side, sucking the moisture from one’s very pores like some all-present demon.  One only had to walk away from the lake for an instant to immediately thirst for Lov in the most desperate ways; not just with the lips, but with one’s entire being.  For this was the worst part of pulling away from Lov, even as a prank:  the emptiness, the void.   The very substance of reassurance, the constant, unavoidable embrace that had been one’s life would suddenly disappear into hot, dry nothingness.  The children of God had from the beginning lived together in one heart.  But now — it was not hatred they would feel, or rage.  It was nothing.

So, what sort of urge would drive so many to experience that dryness more and more often, for longer and longer periods of time?  Inquisitiveness?  Determination?  Simple contrariness?  Or was it the fruit?

You know the account as well as any:  “The earth shall send forth vegetation; seedbearing plants and fruit trees that produce their own kinds of fruits with seed shall be on the earth.  And it was so . . .”    And this fruit grew on dry land.

There was plenty to eat in the waters, of course.  None of the children of God knew the word “hunger.”  At first it was the appearance that attracted, the glowing gold and orange suspended in the air, like a passionate reflection, like suns that did not burn.  Why wait through the long seasons of Lov?  Reach out your hands and taste.

Here the hidden fire slept, cool and defenseless.  Snatch it, defeat it, consume it.

Win.

Were you honestly about to say, ‘What has winning to do with love?’

For the first time, children of God saw love as one season out of all time, as one experience rather than all experience, as something to be won, lost, and re-won, rather than a gift never other than theirs.  In the fruit, they believed they had found a short-cut to eternal fire; why bother with winter, summer, spring, when it could always be brilliant fall? A fall into love.”

“Romantic,’ I was surprised to murmur to myself.

“Bulimic,” the man in white retorted.  “Why starve oneself, eating only crumbs, when everything one touches is banquet?  Why insist on only this day of love, when every day, every month, every second around you is Lov, and only Lov . . .

“Tuesday,” he then muttered in his white iridescence, and sighed.

“Pardon? . . .” I replied.

“It’s insisting that every day be Tuesday, this falling in love of yours; that only Tuesday has worth, passion.  It’s trying to constantly recreate Tuesday.   Oh, often enough it will be Tuesday, and often enough the flame will ignite itself.  But the other six days . . .”

“Are themselves also waters in the one lake?” I said.

The man all in white smiled.

“Falling in Lov is not your issue.  Climbing out of it is.”

“. . . Not just mine, ” I added, more defensive than I’d meant to be.

“No.  Not just yours. But yes, yours.  

Listen . . .

As for the fruit, it was a great deception.  For the children of God, it was the opposite of an aqualung; it provided moisture where there was none, enabled one to spend more and more time on the dry land.  But why?  Why be satisfied with dribbles of water, when an entire lake is there before you, is your home?  Why exist apart from Lov at all, preferring instead to subsist on . . .

“Lov’s bought illusion, ” I whispered, more to myself than to anyone else.

He nodded. “And so, the vicious circle began to strengthen and grow.  They should have realized when the fruit would not survive in the lake of Lov, where it quickly became saturated and spoiled.  And the longer they stayed on the dry land, the more like the fruit these children of God became.  Flashy, impermanent.  Unable. like the fruit they consumed, to spend much time in their lake home.  Coaxing them, forcing them would merely cause them, too, to become spoiled and saturated.  For the first time in human history, it seemed possible to have too much Lov.

But most did not see it.  In order to spend more and more time apart from Lov, which they had no need to do, they required for themselves more and more of the fruit, which they had no need to eat.  In order to experience (so they thought) their fire, their passion at will, they devoured fruit upon fruit, until they became immured even to its illusory effects.  But still they sought it; still they consumed . . . 

With demand for consumption came the lust to control.  The fruit became more and more rare.  The strong trampled the weak to possess it; the stronger battled each other to own the dry land, to control its groves.  Many began to cultivate the fruit; “labor,” a concept unknown in the green depths of Lov, soon became a demand, and then a virtue.  In their battles and work, in their competition, sides were drawn, associations were formed.  Those on the dry land begged their companions in the depths to join them, to help them, in the name of Lov.  And many came.

Soon, too soon, there were more on the dry land, working, warring, needing and demanding, then were children of God in Lov.  Oh, occasionally visits would be paid.  Tuesday does come every so often of itself.  True Lov was still possible, that season when all the world is flame, reflected out of the deepest depths.  Glorious.  Then the Lov’ers would leave the world of illusion, of winning and losing, of needless dryness and false relief, and plunge together into the heart of Lov.  Now everything was as it was in the beginning — everything was in Lov and of Lov, apart from Lov there was nothing for them now.  But few, if any, stayed past the season.  When the winter came, they did not welcome it.  They were afraid; contrary to what they would tell each other, they did not believe enough in their Lov to give up escape, to be sealed all and only in Lov, even for a time.  So, before the roof could form, they would flee from Lov as fast as they could; only to seek it with pathetic fervor, in fruit upon fruit, for the rest of their lives, asking . . .”

“Where did the fire go . . .” I finished his thought, but my mind was elsewhere.

And now, what is to come?  Too many, too many of the children of God have forgotten about Lov entirely, about their home and their destination — and with good reason.  The more they fought, the more the hot blood of violence flowed into the lake, seeking to pollute it.  The more they plowed and built and tortured the dry land, the more their poisons ran off into Lov — for it is inescapable, the link between our work, our wars, and our capacity for Lov.

And deep in their hearts, many on the dry land regretted none of this.  Rather, they had come to enjoy it perversely — the only type of enjoyment left for those who serve illusions.  They had come to disdain, even to hate their brothers and sisters, few though they be, who did not answer their call, who remained all of Lov.  They were subversives, a danger to the social order, a bad influence on their children.  And as Lov knows nothing of fighting back . . .

And so, in your day, those who live solely and always in Lov are few and hidden.  The shores and shallows where some Lov might gently touch the dryness of your lives have been poisoned, even beyond the point of brief refreshment.  All has become work for work’s sake; all rest has become amusement, and amusement hard work all its own.  How tired your holidays and vacations make you!  And that which you call love, even this has become a competition, a race for fruit that is only foam, a slaughter, even among lovers, for one more taste of thirst. 

This is why you call it “falling in love,” for, to you, a fall is a mistake, a shame.  A fall is something from which you must recover as soon as you can.

And those who could teach you another way, these children have spirited themselves away far from you, safe and deep, deep within the very heart of God, which is Lov.”

“Where is this place?” I asked, barely breathing.

“It is said in Jeremiah, ‘God weeps in secret.’  That is the place,” he said.  “The place called Secret.”

“Whose secret?” I whispered, tears beginning now.

“Yours,” replied the man all in white.  “Yes, yours.”  

“But what should I do!”  I had found my voice.  I was shouting.  “Surely there must be something I can do!”

I thought he was hesitating for an instant’s instant.  Then he looked at me and said:

“I order to protect those few of his children who are still faithful to Lov, the Holy One, blessed be his name, will prepare a great winter, in which the surface of Lov will be sealed for a long, long time.  Those who are within Lov, who are of Lov, will remain there, safe in a great retreat, a mystic season.  Those who are outside . . .”  

Then he turned to go.

“Wait! Wait!” I called after him.  “When will all this happen?”

He stopped for an instant, held his hand out, palm up, looking at the sky.

“Snow?” he smiled.

Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, is an educator, poet, writer, shaman, and sage. He publishes broadly in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His latest published full-length works are in poetry, The Realm of Blessing, with Unsolicited Press, in mystery fiction, Noa(h) and the Bark, and in short fiction The Lives and Spiritual Time of C.I. Abramovich, both with Alien Buddha Press. He is the co-founding editor of Soul-Lit, an online journal of spiritual poetry (www.soul-lit.com). Wayne-Daniel lives in Mansfield, MA with his wife, The Lovely Christine.