Meditation

“What are we looking at?”
He asks as we lie on our backs
Eyes to the sky.
“What do you see?”
I ask.
“I see nothing.” He says. Bitterly.
“Ah, yes, exactly.”
He looks again.
“What am I supposed to see?”
There was silence. He did not like
The silence.
It was like a test, a space
That wasn’t usually there.
A space that needed
An answer right away.
“Maybe you aren’t supposed to see anything?”
It was a question and an answer.
“This is stupid.” The word hard like a brick.
“Yes. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is stupid.”
The brick expanded
Into a million pieces
Until it could no longer be
Felt in the pale blue sky.
“I see the sky.
That is it. Nothing else.”
“Yes,” I said.
The grass prickled beneath his thighs.
“I don’t have time for this,” his voice tight and high.
“No, one seldom does.”
“I don’t. I really don’t.”
“I know. I understand.”
The sky stayed as it was. Hardly changing except
For the blue in the west corner
That held a hint of green.
Like deep water.
There was a sound of breath fast in and out.
“I am not okay.”
I nodded.
“No matter how much I try.
I am not okay.”
Together the sound of
Breath in and breath out.
One easy; one labored.
The sky broadened slightly.
“It isn’t my fault,” he cried.
“I know, I know.”
The sky stayed in place.
Blue and empty and whole.
Everything and not everything.
He reached up,
Without realizing.
He reached up and opened his fist
To take a handful and pressed it back
Into his chest.
As if. As if.
The sky stayed in place.
Plenty and full.
Of nothing that would ask or take
Or give or need. Just the sky
That held the moon
Out of sight on the other side
Of the mountains
And the sun that wasn’t quite
Over the ridge
That we forgot to mention
Because it didn’t really matter.
In the sky of everything
And not everything.