Michael Heffernan The Calm and if I perish, I perish.
—Esther 4:16It rained, it threatened rain, and the sun shone
off and on all morning. It is afternoon.
I have been going on about my business.
I do what I need to do to get it done.
For now it doesn't matter what I do.
I thought I heard the clock tick on the wall,
and then it stopped. There was a bitterness
I could not leave. I came to where I am,
and walked toward the air I had to breathe.
And I am breathing. Rain is coming down
all over my small house out in the country.
My sons are missing. Everything's turned over.
Outside the air is falling into the rain,
which is no bad thing. I am sitting in a chair.
I woke at dawn. I stayed in bed. I prayed,
not even on my knees as usual.
I stayed in bed and prayed, which was all right.
So I made coffee and a couple phone calls.
I called a madwoman I used to love.
She wasn’t home. She never was at home.
No one was home but old ghosts in the flue.
The thunder came and got me off the phone
to sit instead on the one chair in the room
that I can sit on. I became amused
almost as never before. I laughed out loud
with nothing much to laugh at. Then a voice
came from the storm and talked to me; it said:
“Be not afraid. I am the Lord Almighty
expounding to you now out of the whirlwind.
Be mindful of who I am and where you are.
The day that you woke to is a good day
to walk around, in your own blood and bone."
The rain came down. The rain did not come down.
The cloud went over that the rain came from.
I heard a thunder then and then no thunder.
I sat there dandling happiness on my knees.
I bent back into the chair and the chair creaked.
I stood and walked around in my own room.
And then I did an ordinary thing.
I took my shaving brush and shaved my face.
I used my UltraGrip for sensitive skin.
It cut what it could cut and nothing else.
I put my pants on then. The thunder came
and talked to me from the sky again. It said
I should not take a shower yet—I might fry.
I did not take a shower. I had my pants on.
That too was ordinary. It was all right.
The book I had consulted a while ago
was on the table open. It had said,
“For how can I endure to see the evil
that shall come unto my people," a while ago,
and now had fallen silent as a refuge
in a place that was going dark, because
the sky was dark again and it was raining.
On the next page the book, still fallen open
to an old verse that I had marked, was saying:
“I only am escaped alone to tell thee."
I walked into the middle of the room
and listened to the thunder going on.
The room was lit with its own light, as a room
lit with its own light is in mid September.
It could rain all day, and I would let it rain.