Monday, May 09, 2011
After All
After All
Every year she got more like herself and less like other people.
Flannery O’Connor
After all,
it could have been different.
You could have been
the woman
whose seams
were always straight,
who looked through eyes
with 20/20 vision
and saw exactly
what the others saw,
no more, no less,
who never had thoughtful wrinkles,
or asked questions
of the oh so certain
workshop leader.
at the front of the room.
You could have been
the Sunday school teacher
with the quiet voice
who followed the lesson plan
line by line,
or the ashram follower
arranging the flowers
and convinced that Baba
was God.
You could have opened wide
and swallowed
whatever it was
they offered
that day as truth,
or knelt down before
an image
that promised salvation.
But you would have
none of that.
Even if you had children,
a mate,
your questioning
didn’t stop there.
You kept on looking,
searching,
keeping a secret diary.
Then one day it happened.
After that you knew
that rumors
of the heavens shuddering open,
of Light arriving in vast profusion,
that all the myths and fables
of mating with the unknown
were real after all.
Dorothy Walters
May 8, 2011
