March 4/22: creating meaning from sh** that happens in a restaurant

He stops in mid sentence.

A look of surprised supplication,

Offers an odd throat clearing cough.

His eyes roll back

And head and body meet floor.

She screams out loud and enters

Another land. The land

Of reflex and automaton.

Of hunt for beat and breath.

Of compression and counting.

Of the slow motion unfurling

Of unbelief and hopelessness.

The room spins.

Disembodied

Voices offer assistance.

“I know CPR.”

She moves back, relinquishes.

Strangely detached -

A spectator, a zombie,

Untouched by act 1,

Anticipating the final curtain.

From this vantage point,

Beneath restaurant table,

She notices minutia in the moment -

The clink of fork on plate.

A baby cries.

A distant laugh.

Life above continues

As life below

Threatens to end.

And later, much later,

When this story is told and retold,

Re-viewed and re-membered and,

In the retelling,

As shock and fear

And helpless surrender

Seep into marrow,

And settle into depths of soul,

It occurs to her.

Where is God in this story?

What of the unseen Reality?

Where to write the Divine

Into this script?

What sense

To make of it all?

My God, my God

Why have you forsaken me?

Or

In the shadow of the valley

You are with me?