The New Promise: Prelude

Before I continue,
I need your word
on something;
come forward
and listen a moment
before you agree
to what is being asked
of you.

Not far from here
an owl is speaking a dead name,
and the sound is like the turning
of a discarded barrel
under a waterfall. In a channel
cut beside the main bed of the river
a trout is belly up.
A tree will fall here later tonight
and no breeze will notice its absence,
but I can tell you now,
even as we see how quickly most things end,
that you will be loved for a long time
after your imprisonment here is over;

there will be meals where you are celebrated
and your name will be used freely
when people speak of the shards
left by the side of the hearth
when a long cherished vessel
has broken. You will be as free as anything can be,
once it is released from its form and function
and re-fashioned as a token of God.

If you choose, we can talk for hours
of that freedom
and the fleeting but sacred nature of a warm hand
laid upon your own,

or we can simply sit together
without speaking and imagine
a land of bread and milk waiting out there,
not silent, but full of the sound
of passages.
But before we do,
I need to know if you are ready

to live as if
this temporary life
still matters, as if we can be comfortable
with how the owl looks at us,
steadily, tenderly,
even as he begins to call…

come now, and answer,
before he can speak.