This Sunday Brings Me Surprise
poem
Article voiceover
I wake late. I slept well. I hear my family upstairs attending to their cares. Somewhere, a church bell calls strangers to prayer. I'm called to this poem. I'm already home. I'll soon ascend the stairs and greet those I love most but, for now, I'll take a few moments to break bread with my dearest ghost: Hello, father, Hello, my father's ghost, Should I tell my readers that your powwow bustle fell from its honored place on the wall as I wrote this mournful and joyous poem? Who should I thank for this eagle-feathered prank? Who threw my rhymes askew? Who lifted your bustle from the hook and draped it over my desk? I know it was just the breeze from the open window but I think of my friend who once laughed at my various disbeliefs and said, "Sherman, do you ever wonder why your life is filled with so much coincidence?" I smiled as I placed my father's powwow bustle back on the wall and then I walked upstairs and told my wife this story. She smiled and went on with her day. Why did this woman choose me? I don't know. But I'm mostly comfortable with all the mysteries. I'm good with today's spiritual lesson. And I'm grateful for all the blessings given to the world by whatever gives all the blessings.
"... I'm grateful for all the blessings given to the world by whatever gives all the blessings."
I am a disbeliever, Sherman, and, as an old woman, I believe less and less with each passing day. BUT I know as well as I know anything that this line was written just for me. On my tombstone I would like to have written "She was grateful for whatever gave all the blessings". Thank you.
I'm not a spiritual person, but some coincidences often make me wonder, drop my jaw, and temporarily break my mind. For instance, a friend died on the hardwood of my old living room five years ago. He was notoriously known for playing the same Billy Joel song on the juke box at work and everywhere he went. He’d play it several times in a night. Somebody sang the song while strumming an acoustic guitar at his funeral. Earlier this year, on the anniversary of his death, I stepped onto a city bus at eight a.m., and the second the door opened to let me board, that song came on the radio. What the …