"Barn’s burnt down – now I can see the moon.”
--Mizuta Masahide.
--Mizuta Masahide.
Nothing fades without returning to brilliance
Davidson Voices, Nov. 22, 2022
On the first evening after the end of Daylight Savings Time, Sunday’s sun fading in the western sky, I step onto my back deck to watch night’s coming. Rain that washed down all day has come to a soft close. I brush wet leaves from the concrete steps, ease down onto dampness. The dog bounces around me, nudging my knee, tossing a ball to himself in the yard.
I have come outside at the cusp of day because this particular fall’s colors have left me breathless. Everybody’s saying it, and it’s true. Remember last year? I ask. Remember how brown, how sparse. Remember the persimmon harvest, with barely enough pulp for one loaf of bread. Remember the dullness of the mountain vistas, how that willow in the side yard was bare by early October?
But leaves aren’t the only thing going on in my back yard. Somewhere nearby, our neighborhood owl has begun his “Who-who-who cooks for you,” so close that neighbors behind me are flashing a beam of light into the trees to try to find him.
The apartment complex at the end of the street has added lights to its cupola, and they are blinking—red, blue, green, white. Red, blue, green, white—in steady rhythm with the breath of evening.
And a full moon blazes above the tree line. My god. My God. What a night.
I’ve been thinking lately about another fall, years back. I lived in Hazard, Kentucky, then, deep in the Appalachian Mountains, where nothing surprised me because everything was a surprise.
My friend Jan, daughter of New England intellectuals, had come to the mountains for a real teaching experience, and that’s what she’d found: students with hearts of gold whose stories would break your heart; poverty rich with family and tradition; that old time religion, even in the big mainline churches.
She’d bought a house in a remote holler on the banks of the North Fork of the Kentucky River. To visit her, I’d drive deep and deeper down an isolated gravel road that traced the riverbank, past sprawling complexes of mobile homes and thin boarded houses, abandoned automobiles, chickens roaming, children roaming, adults on porches or in chairs in the yard watching me as I drove past.
Jan’s house was near the end of the road, but at the very end was the tiny Four Square Gospel Fellowship Church, which Jan visited so regularly that its members knew her, were working hard to convert her to their ways. It was a church that practiced glossolalia—speaking in tongues. It was one step away from snake handling and strychnine drinking, common practices in this area.
Autumns in the mountains were particularly beautiful, as they were the fall that Jan had heart surgery to replace a faulty valve. She was only in her mid-40s, but already experiencing a body full of problems that would haunt her long after she left the Kentucky hills. I visited her in the hospital the evening after her surgery, took with me a long-armed, stuffed brown monkey that I roped around the rails of her bed.
Two women of Four Square were there, keeping vigil by her bedside, in their long skirts and uncut hair. Chances are their faith in the healing power of Jesus was far greater than their faith in the medical community. Despite that faith, machines beeped and hummed. Jan’s heartbeat was visible in the green line on the screen. In her nose, an oxygen tube, her long, blond hair held away from her head with a band. When she saw me, she smiled and in a weak voice introduced me to the women, who acknowledged me with a nod.
“We were just going to pray for our Sister Jan,” said the elder woman. “Won’t you join us?”
I didn’t know if they were asking me to take part or simply close my eyes, but I did neither. I stood at the foot of the bed between them. Each woman clasped one of Jan’s slender hands, cupped it between two hands of their own. They glanced at me one last time, then turned to Sister Jan, closed their eyes, lowered their heads, and began.
What followed was unlike any prayer I’d ever heard. The elder woman began, her voice clear, strong, and fast, words delivered in one breathless stream, like an auctioneer, only the words I could catch were words of praise, Jesus, Lord, healing. I didn’t catch many. Her voice was an upper octave hymn, almost a solo, except that her younger counterpart prayed a softer harmony of her own. And then, with no signal that I could detect, the voices began to shift. As the older woman’s strong voice began to fade into background, the young woman picked up the melody, praying her own words of healing for Jan, and, I assume, for the world.
I watched both, my eyes wide open, as the dual prayer undulated, back and forth, passing back and forth, one voice becoming almost inaudible while the other grew in strength. Each woman raised her head as her prayers rose, lowered as her voice softened. They carried on this way, up and down, up and down, winding their words around the room like the waters of the North Fork along its muddy shore, like the rattlesnake on the hillside, making its way to dry land. They swept over the blinking lights of machines, around the dim, white hospital room, the food tray with the remainder of dinner, the unused bedpan. A nurse in blue scrubs arrived at the door, stopped, didn’t enter. There was a force in this room greater than I’ve ever felt.
I looked at Jan. Her face glowed, almost as if it had been touched by moonlight breaking through the window, pulsing as her new heart pulsed. Later she let me listen to her heart, its new beat like the sloshing of a spigot, telling her the valve was working. I have no doubt that evening she was calmed by the wave of her own heart in sync with the voices.
Nothing fades without returning to brilliance. I will tell you now as I would have told you then that I don’t believe in this kind of prayer, in glossolalia, snakes, strychnine. It’s seldom enough that I believe in Jesus. But something was happening in that hospital room that night, something I had and have no access to and was only privileged to witness.
Jan healed. They never did convert her, but she never stopped going to Four Square Gospel Fellowship Church as long as she lived in Hazard. She found something there that made a difference to her, something in the people, maybe, something in their faith, something for her heart.
I’ve long believed not so much in the healing power of undulating prayer, but in the undulations of the natural world. The sun rises, the sun sets. Winters blossom into springs. Even in the human world, courage follows fear. Community follows chaos. Fading is always followed by brilliance. There’s something built into each of us called hope, and I can’t stop believing in it, for myself, for all of us.
I have come outside at the cusp of day because this particular fall’s colors have left me breathless. Everybody’s saying it, and it’s true. Remember last year? I ask. Remember how brown, how sparse. Remember the persimmon harvest, with barely enough pulp for one loaf of bread. Remember the dullness of the mountain vistas, how that willow in the side yard was bare by early October?
But leaves aren’t the only thing going on in my back yard. Somewhere nearby, our neighborhood owl has begun his “Who-who-who cooks for you,” so close that neighbors behind me are flashing a beam of light into the trees to try to find him.
The apartment complex at the end of the street has added lights to its cupola, and they are blinking—red, blue, green, white. Red, blue, green, white—in steady rhythm with the breath of evening.
And a full moon blazes above the tree line. My god. My God. What a night.
I’ve been thinking lately about another fall, years back. I lived in Hazard, Kentucky, then, deep in the Appalachian Mountains, where nothing surprised me because everything was a surprise.
My friend Jan, daughter of New England intellectuals, had come to the mountains for a real teaching experience, and that’s what she’d found: students with hearts of gold whose stories would break your heart; poverty rich with family and tradition; that old time religion, even in the big mainline churches.
She’d bought a house in a remote holler on the banks of the North Fork of the Kentucky River. To visit her, I’d drive deep and deeper down an isolated gravel road that traced the riverbank, past sprawling complexes of mobile homes and thin boarded houses, abandoned automobiles, chickens roaming, children roaming, adults on porches or in chairs in the yard watching me as I drove past.
Jan’s house was near the end of the road, but at the very end was the tiny Four Square Gospel Fellowship Church, which Jan visited so regularly that its members knew her, were working hard to convert her to their ways. It was a church that practiced glossolalia—speaking in tongues. It was one step away from snake handling and strychnine drinking, common practices in this area.
Autumns in the mountains were particularly beautiful, as they were the fall that Jan had heart surgery to replace a faulty valve. She was only in her mid-40s, but already experiencing a body full of problems that would haunt her long after she left the Kentucky hills. I visited her in the hospital the evening after her surgery, took with me a long-armed, stuffed brown monkey that I roped around the rails of her bed.
Two women of Four Square were there, keeping vigil by her bedside, in their long skirts and uncut hair. Chances are their faith in the healing power of Jesus was far greater than their faith in the medical community. Despite that faith, machines beeped and hummed. Jan’s heartbeat was visible in the green line on the screen. In her nose, an oxygen tube, her long, blond hair held away from her head with a band. When she saw me, she smiled and in a weak voice introduced me to the women, who acknowledged me with a nod.
“We were just going to pray for our Sister Jan,” said the elder woman. “Won’t you join us?”
I didn’t know if they were asking me to take part or simply close my eyes, but I did neither. I stood at the foot of the bed between them. Each woman clasped one of Jan’s slender hands, cupped it between two hands of their own. They glanced at me one last time, then turned to Sister Jan, closed their eyes, lowered their heads, and began.
What followed was unlike any prayer I’d ever heard. The elder woman began, her voice clear, strong, and fast, words delivered in one breathless stream, like an auctioneer, only the words I could catch were words of praise, Jesus, Lord, healing. I didn’t catch many. Her voice was an upper octave hymn, almost a solo, except that her younger counterpart prayed a softer harmony of her own. And then, with no signal that I could detect, the voices began to shift. As the older woman’s strong voice began to fade into background, the young woman picked up the melody, praying her own words of healing for Jan, and, I assume, for the world.
I watched both, my eyes wide open, as the dual prayer undulated, back and forth, passing back and forth, one voice becoming almost inaudible while the other grew in strength. Each woman raised her head as her prayers rose, lowered as her voice softened. They carried on this way, up and down, up and down, winding their words around the room like the waters of the North Fork along its muddy shore, like the rattlesnake on the hillside, making its way to dry land. They swept over the blinking lights of machines, around the dim, white hospital room, the food tray with the remainder of dinner, the unused bedpan. A nurse in blue scrubs arrived at the door, stopped, didn’t enter. There was a force in this room greater than I’ve ever felt.
I looked at Jan. Her face glowed, almost as if it had been touched by moonlight breaking through the window, pulsing as her new heart pulsed. Later she let me listen to her heart, its new beat like the sloshing of a spigot, telling her the valve was working. I have no doubt that evening she was calmed by the wave of her own heart in sync with the voices.
Nothing fades without returning to brilliance. I will tell you now as I would have told you then that I don’t believe in this kind of prayer, in glossolalia, snakes, strychnine. It’s seldom enough that I believe in Jesus. But something was happening in that hospital room that night, something I had and have no access to and was only privileged to witness.
Jan healed. They never did convert her, but she never stopped going to Four Square Gospel Fellowship Church as long as she lived in Hazard. She found something there that made a difference to her, something in the people, maybe, something in their faith, something for her heart.
I’ve long believed not so much in the healing power of undulating prayer, but in the undulations of the natural world. The sun rises, the sun sets. Winters blossom into springs. Even in the human world, courage follows fear. Community follows chaos. Fading is always followed by brilliance. There’s something built into each of us called hope, and I can’t stop believing in it, for myself, for all of us.
This collection of poetry is written from journal notes taken during a mission trip to Galeana, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, where orphanage children, rebels, and Americans meet.
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Winner of the Longleaf Press Chapbook competition and the Oscar Arnold Young Award for Best Book, Unravelings wrestles with the inevitability of growing older.
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