I used to live and work at a camp in the mountains several miles outside the city. This poem describes an experience I had during one of my summers there. The perspective is that of a much younger version of myself. I didn’t write this poem intending to connect it to an ongoing series on Silence but I think it fits the theme.
I’ve always had a place in my heart for the angry young man. The one who is full of desire and energy and hates the modern world for giving him nowhere to direct it. Such young men are the source of a fair portion of death and destruction it is true. But I think an even sadder world is the one in which all the young men are Last Men as Nietzsche described or Men Without Chests as Lewis prophesied. As long as there is still some Eros, some life-drive, some desire, there is still the opportunity for it to be aimed at the divine.
While that line about this poem being from the perspective of my younger self is technically true, it’s a lie in that it implies my current perspective is somehow more mature or settled. There is still that boy who is always threatening to set something on fire just to get his dad’s attention.
Vigil
Wasn't I looking for you
when, just ahead of the storm,
I grabbed my pack, sleeping bag,
headlamp, tarp,
and ran out into the night?
Weren’t you proud of
how I scaled the mountain,
unafraid of being alone, or the storm,
or the effort,
or having no reason to get there
so quickly or at all?
Didn't you see me as
I climbed the rock face in the dark,
working by feel
the wind pulling at my pack,
testing my grip,
my feet slipping in the rain?
Didn't I secretly hope
that wind would tear me from the wall
and hurl me up into the heavens
to disappear into that
darkness backlit by stars?
Wasn't I looking for you–
for something–
a theophany, a transfiguration,
my spirit animal;
a bear to place his paw on my chest
and give me a secret name,
a lion to slash my eye so through it
I could see invisible things?
Were you or were you not
blessing me, holding out on me,
when lightning was striking
every surrounding peak
and I looked up, waiting to be next,
standing at the center
of a great ring of fire
until the rain picked up?
Was it you who commanded
the storm to withhold its anger
until the moment after
I unfolded my tarp and unrolled my bag
and lay down and covered myself,
at which point the reservoirs of rain
were fully opened
and I fell asleep to the roar?
Are you in this mountain
with its ancient gravity?
Are you in this rain
pressing down on me?
Is this howling wind your icy breath?
Do these lightning bolts extend from
your palms, your fingers, your eyes?
Didn't you come in the the night
and lie down next to me
back to back to keep each other warm?
Did you wake me by running
your fingers through my hair?
Do you love me? Do you hate me?
Did you forget you made me?
Don't you sustain me?