Poem: A Delay in Seeing

A Delay in Seeing

You stumble on the picture in an unexpected place,
the old house you lived in
when the world as you knew it came to an end,
and you are surprised how little it means now,
a decade and more into your new world,
how you remember reading on the porch roof
and gas fireplace and the drunken stairs,
not two steps parallel with the other.
It was a five minute walk to the coffee shop
and across the street from your daughter’s school
and kids would come on Fridays and hang out.
You always had snacks.
And in the remembering, you understand
that the black days were not a death,
but a rebirth, a moment when it all turned
and what you thought you wanted
was neither what you really wanted or needed,
and somehow the end of the world turned into the beginning,
everything before, just a precursor, a 25 year lesson
that blessed you with children
and the knowledge of just how simple you were
and wanted to be, and how, after trial and error,
you came to understand just what love was
and was not. And so you look at the old photograph
with fondness, aware finally of the magic
of God working when you cannot see it,
until much, much later,
and you wonder now, exactly what God is up to
and where you will come out next
and exactly how blind you are, and for how long.