I Hoped to Be a Pure Image

October 11, 2005

I spoke with a friend of mine tonight…
We walked, and talked, in circles, ‘round our neighborhood…
He asked a question first, and listened…

I tried to fill his empty sentence with a sentence or two of my own,
filling with meaning, raiding inarticulate, waiting for meaning to come.

There was a long pause, a long space, no words, only walking,
mist and smoke emitting from our mouths, mine and his.

The quietude of the neighborhood, the universe, filled me up.

Empty, in turn, I then posed a sentence,
so without meaning, the word filled it up,
and it hit, it connected, it communicated,
we communed, us both, another, many.

As I listened,
while he tried to fill my empty sentence with a sentence or two of his own,
I noted
that I hoped
to one day be
a pure image.

I hoped to be securely naught, to waiver not, to flicker not,
but as a candle steadfast, burning,
casts a shadow in the air
when air, not stirring, keeps it upright
so to be a shadow,
nothing, turn
in space around the light of lights.

I hoped to be such liquid glass
of heat and substance, purity,
that pour it this way, feel it that,
it would show clearly what’s beyond it
and behind it, and beneath it, and below
it is not noted, can’t be known,
nor seen or heard but filled with hearing and with seeing
by recasting sight and sound.

I hoped to be a human being,
not a beast nor yet a god,
so filled with wisdom, filled with lacking,
that through me would be wisdom seen…
so formless to receive formation,
still, as to receive all motion,
so near dead to be alive.

And as I hoped, outside of time,
the hope of glory smiled at me,
my roommate talking,
as he said: “I want surrender.”
“I do too.”


Glory to God alone.