Unless

“Oh woeful, woeful, woeful day!” We mocked the Bard’s lament in play.
But that was high school, long ago, and now I know what Shakespeare
meant and why that’s what his characters still say…

The day has woe, and sometimes it is full – too full for one tipped over word –
too full of tragedy to even stop at two; this needs a third.
It doesn’t bear repeating, but we do.

And who can say what can be borne by one? Or for how long, as if grief can be done.
Grief is a river flowing to the sea of all the tears that have been shed since
time began and love made history.

A story more of loss and moving on and endless change,
with flashing ripples hiding deepness and the mouths of all that’s strange
and predatory, glimpsed or just imagined, and then gone.

I cannot settle; cannot try to sleep. My body hums with all the tautness of its wires
that sift the sounds and sights and memories of the deep
and yet resist as gravity requires.

The tension of what is and what will come - unknown by me and yet
its weight is guessed by fear and worry’s sum -
a calculation of no benefit.

Okay, I say, to Shakespeare, and to God. The thinness of the ice I tread on
is the world. It is the way we all cross rivers hiding death.
The miracle is each frost-laden breath.

Okay. I’ll walk in gravity, and hear the cracking of the shell
beneath my feet,
and all that is unknown and dark and unfulfilled -
all that is Hell.
I’ll not presume to miss the tragedy.

Unless…

You turn the chaos into land;
pull dark from light and give it borders
I can understand…
Unless You thaw the ice,
but hold my hand,
and tell me that I walk upon the waters
exactly
as You
planned.