THE HOLY SURPRISE OF RIGHT NOW

If you can see your path laid out ahead of you step
by step, then you know it’s not your path.
-Joseph Campbell

Inside Brooks Brothers’ windows

it’s July.

Sport shirts on sleek

dummies speak in turquoise,

polo, Bermuda and golf.

Outside, it’s very much the first

of March.

The sport shirts say

today’s tomorrow and the present

tense be damned.

They tell me

to forget that here’s the only place

we have.

They claim what matters

most is never now but next.

I’ve heard this argument before.

It leaves me sentenced to the future,

and that’s much worse than being

sentenced to the past.

The past

at least was real just once…

What’s

called religion offers me the same.

Life’s never what we have

but what’s to come.

But where

did Christ give heaven its address

except within each one of us?

So, anyone who claims it’s not

within but still ahead is contradicting

God.

But why go on?

I’m sick of learning to anticipate.

I never want to live a second

or a season or a heaven in advance

of when I am and where.

I need the salt and pepper

of uncertainty to know I’m still

alive.

It makes me hunger

for the feast I call today.

It lets desire keep what

satisfaction ends.

Lovers

remember that the way that smoke

remembers fire.

Between anticipation

and the aggravation of suspense, I choose

suspense.

I choose desire.

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