The Issue of a Higher Power

It’s in the supple fingers of an evening breeze

Sneaking in through an open window

Fresh on my skin

Evocative of other evenings

Alive only in cherished memories

It’s in your eyes

When I catch you looking at me

When you don’t think I see

It’s in the cries of a friend

Devastated by cancer

Knowing what’s coming

And afraid of being alone and forgotten

It’s in the little things

overlooked

A kind word

A compliment,

which I never take well

but desperately need

It’s in what my mother did to me

And for me

It’s in the relationship

I still have with my father

It’s in my grandchild’s limp,

vulnerable body

asleep on my shoulder

It’s in the bubbling laughter

The give and take of friends

Knowing every dark secret about each other

And still valuing each other

It’s in the comfort

Of my things—

A sparkling gemstone curved to my arm

The photographs of moments and people

never to come again

The shiny clean of the tile floor cool on my feet

The order of my life

In weekend ironing

And Sunday grocery shopping

It’s in the knowledge

You can’t sleep until I come to bed

Pacing downstairs

Waiting for me to finish a phone call

It’s in knowing you won’t let me

Make a bad decision—won’t let me

Go off half-cocked on my first impulse—

Even though it always comes back

To what I knew without knowing

It’s in my brothers

Who have moved away

But pick up the dance

After five minutes in my presence

It’s in the bittersweet memories

Of boys and men

Sampled over the years

The yearning, the coupling,

The choices made

Harsh and bleeding

Phantom pain of arms

No longer open to me

It’s in the words

I place on the page

To tell me what I really know

It’s in the spaces between the words

The lives interwoven through me

The saves and the losses

It’s in the clear eyes of my son

Focused on salvaging a life

It’s in the absolute certainty

Things will come right

In the end

                        —Katherine M. Searle

                          1 October 2006