Spiritual Evaluation, and: Grief

Spiritual Evaluation

If You Think You Have Been the Victim of Witchcraft, Envy, the Evil Eye, or Bad Luck, Come Inside and Get a Spiritual Evaluation.

—sign on the Church of Jesus Christ in the Lord, Philadelphia

Did you want this baby?There are a certain number of questions you may pass overwithout forfeiting your score on the test.Do you understand that metaphors involving hummingbirdsare not useful? Do you understandthat you are in no way related to hummingbirds?If this baby is the size of an a) eraser or b) apricotor c) memory, will you be able to determinewhether on the day after the hurricane,the river was as full as a river can bewithout flooding the ramp to the bypass?Heavy rain has been knownto push hummingbirds into bodies of water,causing them to drown. Hummingbirdsremember each flower they have visitedand on average they visit 1,000 flowers a day.Define, in one word, your relationship with the unbelievable.Do you think you have been the victim of witchcraft?There is a limited number of questionsyou may choose not to answer.Calculate the amount of water in a bathtubif one eighth of it drains at one half of the speedthat the water now flows down the river.You have one hour and nine months.You have six months. You have the evening.When you hear the words count down,do you think of the moon? When you picture the moon,do you see its surface or a not inhospitable orb that alternates in size according to proximity with rooftops?This problem is commonly referred to as moon illusion.This theory is generally known as shape constancy.With the shape of your body please provethat the moon does not generate its own light. Do you likecharades? If this baby is a girl, what.If this baby is a boy. Do you thinkyou have been the victim of bad luck?Describe in five words what this baby will fearif this baby is an apricot. List everyone it will loveif it is an eraser. Will this baby’s smile be likea) the furniture in your basement orb) someone dead whom you loved more than you lovethe baby. Explain what it means to love someone more.

Grief

Let it be seeds.Let it be the slow tornado of seeds from the oak treeby the gates to the playground in May wind.Today is mother’s day and someone said it is almost impossibleto remember something before you know the word for itand the babies in their mothers’ armsstare at the seeds and they don’t knowthe word for falling. Nor the word for sudden or whirling.Let it be something that doesn’t last, not the moon.Let it not be the rooftops that are so quiet.Let it come to the white doorstep like rain and slideonto the sidewalk not knowing. What is gentle if not timebut it’s not time that is gentle, what will happen in the futuredoes not matter. Cicadas underground are called nymphsand their wings look like tree seeds. Trapped under skinand as soft as the dirt that surrounds them.Teneral is a word for the days betweenwhen the cicada digs its way out of earth and begins to singand when its self and shell are stilla single, susceptible thing. It is impossibleto remember. Let it be the yearsunderground, molting nymph skinand moving in the soil without sound.It’s not time that is gentle but what unknown sign,a method of counting each spring through the roots of a tree.How they learn from the taste of a root’s juice the momentwhen in one rush they should push up to earth.Teneral, meaning not yet hardened, a sense before a memoryof the shell. Let it be...