For the Book

If you keep a journal it must be a beautiful book
 you return to as I was doing this morning
  
 having put chores aside for my daily entry when
 to my amazement my number two pencil caught fire
  
 that seared up my fingers, my arm to my elbow
 and onto my shoulder where strands of my hair –
  
 perfect tinder – ignited and I became flame, oh!
 I was a flare of irreducible beauty ablaze –
  
 what I truly longed for all my life was happening:
 a visitation, an ordination by fire, an anointing
  
 by the spirit leaving evidence in curls of smoke
 rising like fragrance from a swung censer
  
 like embers flung as stars against darkness –
 but for a moment - it was enough for the moment
  
 and I returned to my journal, my pencil nowhere
 to be seen – but indelible tracks were left in the
                                                                         
 circadian place where I turn myself in as psalmic
 entries of praise and lament, sorrow and joy - 
 none other than Lenten compunction, a record
 of to whom I belong, nothing more nothing less 
 than remembering this happened – as we remember 
 our beloved one’s words to the one who, in longing
 and love, returned to the tomb to tend to the body, 
  
 Do not cling to me - 
  
 words giving consent, awaiting translation:
  
 “Woman, you, too, are a reflection of God’s beauty
 embodied ordained to be who you must be and can be
 arising to be who you are.” 

By Margie Dimoplon