Jack and I were sharing a reading
about ancient Egypt.
He would read
and I would read,
of desert, pyramids
and the great artery of Africa,
the Nile,
as rain pattered on the window
behind us.
A storm was moving in
to the lilt of our voices.
Then a tapping on the glass,
the staccato of hail
like stones thrown from the darkness.
A violence shuddered at the door.
To the basement, Jack, I ordered,
and stepping to Mark’s crib
I handed him to his mother,
and the family retreated
to the basement,
as the house resounded
from the blows outside,
a storm unlike October.
We descended to our pyramid
inside the earth.
What the Egyptians understood
of life and death.
The building of a sanctuary
for the soul.
A buttress against the sands
of time,
the uncertainty of the flood,
the water of life
that could drown them,
just as well.
The sky that brings so much peace.
Is that the mother of our hearts
pounding on the window,
her words lashing with lightning
as we gather the treasure
of our lives,
in a sarcophagus of life
protected from above?
Jack had asked
what ancient meant,
and I said,
what happened so long ago
that we almost forget
it happened.
And to myself I said,
tonight, the mother sky reminds us
how fragile pyramids are.