There must have been mornings
in 1351
as the Black Death
draped across landscapes and
eyelids
like a thick shroud
when a mother
opened her shutters
to another cart,
another bell,
another street
that smelled of smoke
and vinegar
and thought,
surely
this is how
the world ends.
Men standing
on the beaches
of Normandy
in 1944,
sand grinding
between their teeth,
salt on their lips,
seawater
inside their boots,
diesel, smoke,
and cordite
marrying the wind,
helmets knocking
against trembling shoulders,
watching boys
become bodies
before breakfast,
must have wondered
whether heaven
had finally
grown tired of us all.
And in 1945
somewhere
beneath the ash
of the
atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
where shadows
stayed behind
long after people had gone,
someone looked upward
through a sky
that probably looked more like
a concrete dome
and thought,
this time—
surely.
Surely.
And then,
one day—
John
an old exile
on an island
looked up
and saw
a lamb
standing
as though slain.
He saw seals
split open.
He heard trumpets.
Watched stars
fall like figs
from a shaken tree
and oceans darken.
Mountains moved.
Creatures
with eyes
pressed into their feathers
like dew
on spring grass,
seeing forward,
backward,
inward,
through things
men call mysteries—
And still—
this morning,
2026
a woman
in Missouri
stands barefoot
at her kitchen sink,
watching squirrels
and robins
tumble through
grass and mud,
the coffee pot gurgles
and sighs,
sunlight,
with a long list of to-dos
does
what it always has
through green leaves,
a sparrow
argues with a cardinal
over spilt seed.
What is inside this moment?
The past?
The future?
Only now?
Yes.
The moment of calm.
After and
before
the storm.
—Iris Lennox
Iris Lennox 