The Past, Its Presence, Prelude to a Prayer

from _Makarios_, my collection-in-progress

There I lay, floating on my back upon the blue

Aegean, that same sea pressed against the sun-bathed

sands of Serifos. I was suddenly thinking

of the past, the blurred nature of its presence, and how—

however blurred its áffect—the past presses so

aggressively against…is it the chest? the throat?

somewhere low in the throat? high in the chest? making

breath itself a chore, and making the mind dip yet

again into the familiar dread that rests so

like a dead, salt sea, deep in the gut. It remains

a calm sea—σαν λάδι, as the Greeks say, but is

no less a sea of dread. I swim there every

so often—usually when certain moments of the past

remind me of their presence, or when the present

for a moment trembles with a strange resemblance

to the past, or when thoughts of the future trouble

the surface calm, the shimmering oils of that sore

expansive sea that is the past. Yes, my modest

meditation proves to be more than a little

circular in its movement, but even that late

gesture proves emblematic of the past, partaking

of the roiling confusions found whenever thoughts

about the future move the glib clock-hands hard

to the left, into the past. If I were floating

in Australia, I’m guessing the clock-hands would spin

hard to the right. Even the sweetest of my past

moments—images of my young daughter, my young son,

my young wife—send me into new anxieties

about what is yet to come—their lives without me.

God, may my descent not leave them bereft, but pleased

to lie back upon this same cradling sea, feeling

on their faces the warmth of the Aegean sun,

trusting that I have not gone quite so far away

as in moments of our dread I may appear to be.