Walk with me this afternoon

Walk with me this afternoon
underneath the dull blue-grey skies
embalmed by an expanse of sorrow
settling, like winter’s first snow,
o’er this sickly heart, when hope has
fled and with her all the dreams that
borne me to this world, relinquished,
when life has been put up for sale.

I have stared at that blank canvas,
without gesso—
no mark, no trace, untreated—
and have seen the black knight of misery
awaken from his long, restful sleep, and
longing to husband my dreams; and I,
arrested by that vast grief, cloaked, and
smashing into my body in cyclopean waves of pain,
pleaded for deliverance and for the light to come,
when life has been put up for sale.

Gazing abstractly at the heavens
with fright for where my soul one day shall rest,
I search for meaning where previously
there was none:
because I have wrestled with despair smooth
chest to smooth chest;
have danced with those unnamable night noises until
the dawn’s early light;
have staggered through Gethsemane when others fled,
believing in deliverance and that the light will come;
and through the dark, menacing storm clouds
assailing the dull blue-grey skies
the sunlight breaches the murk and blackness of
this terrible dwelling place.

Walk with me this afternoon
underneath the unfurling orange hue,
against the gentle breeze caressing, tickling, prickling—
and in that sweet, uplifting rush
a melodious rhapsody, to which the angels sing,
glides into my heart, and I, too, sing,
when life is up for sale.

—M. Marcus A. Lopés