Historical Setting: a stone hovel in an unknown time
I’m laid out inside a cavern of neatly stacked stone with a large, boney canine guarding my every move while the little monk, who rescued me is away. When the wooly little man comes in the canine hobbles on her three legs into the dark to her own straw bed.
Also, inside this shared shadow, nearly as high up as the sky hole is a large black bird with a dangling, loosened wing. It is perched on a broken driftwood limb leaned against the wall nearly at the apex of sky. Surely this bird was recalled from the skies just as I was recalled from the sea. Just as I am broken in many pieces, this bird has dangling and disheveled bones amid the leftover feathers of its wing. It clings to a branch placed near the sky hole, safe from the canine this bird longs for the full sky. It appears to be a shag, like the many who wait on the rocks for the glint of a fish at the turning of the tide.
The little monk returns with a pail of sea stuff and so the bird feasts. Like the canine and me, also, the bird seems relentlessly tethered to life itself; incessantly testing that broken wing, faltering on a frail leg shifting, then catching balance again.
The little wooly monk pours a bowl with oats from a small grain sack for the canine. He is boiling a cooking kettle on the center fire, while the thread of smoke wends out through the pupil of this stoney eyeball where we dwell. He adds several hands full of oats to the pot, and makes a fine gruel which he now spoons into a bowl.
He sees my famished need and comes to me and lifts my head onto a small bundle of woven rags and spoons the soft warm cereal into my mouth. It is a great kindness.
I find I’m able to make a sound intended as a word of thanks for this human kindness, though he seems not to notice. I know I’ve made a sound because the canine rushes quickly over, intruding in my breathing space, watching me to maintain her guard protecting our little master from any possible annoyance I could cause.
This bit of food gives me a new strength and, in some way, affirms the possibility for healing though this part of healing seems like a lengthening of pain. It could be a good end.
Dear God, thank you.
A day of peaceful sleeps and wakings…
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 