Follow Your Bliss


 

...AND DEMONS FLED

Did you know me when I prayed for you? I was the

   first and bravest ray of dawn that shimmered

     through your window; as you slept, I swaddled you
       in light, a tissue-cotton blanket... leapt and

    skipped (as if I were an acrobat) for happiness
  above your bed; swept down to kiss away your pain,
the way my mother did when I was feeling lonely or
had skinned my knee... but this was for the knitting
   of your bones; and demons fled dismayed by my

     caress. Your muscles, where they had been taut,
       began to soften like a stick of butter left beside
         an open window on a summer day.

'...and demons fled.' Michelangelo, The Last Judgment

          I played a little
        fugue and sang my way into your dreams—
               Follow your bliss... follow your bliss...
     —the song expanding to a symphony so lovely that
   the stars swayed, and the fading moon embraced you
just before it set. In that eternal second all the universe
  was rapt, a captive to the beauty of your spirit, gleaming
     and intact; the earth, the seas and mountains wept with
        love. And as you lay there, sleeping, still, by heaven's
      grace protected in a fortress built of peace and painted
   dreams, a smile as sweet as lilacs' fragrance crept across
your face.

John Atkinson Grimshaw, Spirit of the Night

I sped away; your private flock of angels never left your side.

   Believe it when you sense a something like a feather (velvet as

     a languid breeze) brush past or feel a something

       like a blessing as if fingertips of sunlight had escaped a

     wedge of leaden cloud to smooth a drop of salve across

   your brow

—for Jody