Days in January

On the seventh day of January,

before the winter snow,

on a quiet Friday,

you closed your eyes to dream.

The pain fell away instantly

and was replaced

with warm, surging, sparkling, blazing with stars,

white light;

wrapped tightly around you

with all the love in the universe

from the depths of places,

unknown to

mortals.

You closed your eyes

to sounds of crying

but as the static cleared,

there were sounds of

distant, increasingly familiar voices;

voices unheard in years

and then sounds of a party,

like Times Square on New Year's,

and the sounds of every song you ever heard,

but somehow being received as one.

 Everything

and singularity

forged as one.

And suddenly,

 there was the smell of a fresh Spring day,

after a cleansing rain,

and flowers

and love

and feeling so new and refreshed,

and happy and whole

and beautiful

and perfect;

again,

and forever.

Familiar feelings,

long since stirred

like an old pair of favorite shoes,

your essence clicks to life

in a new world.

Blissfully happy!

Perfect peace,

a place where time rests

and resets.

And somewhere

in the far away distance,

a screen door with broken hinges swings shut,

as a tv squawks weather news,

and something about a bank robbery

and birds falling out of the sky.

While here, we pick up

the shattered pieces of our estranged lives

and with broken hearts

remember our time with you.

as time clicks on,

notch by notch on a rusty wheel . . .

and the eighth day of

January is born.

                                                                                                Joyce Burns | January 2011

For our friend Hope.  May she find eternal peace.