Appearances
“You could burn the chair,”
my son says,
grinning and
knowing I am not averse
to such embodied
acts of faith,
at times the
crazier the better.
Morning by morning
I now sit across from
that chair—
dove-gray velvet
with brass tacks—
where for three years,
each morning
as the sun rose,
I quietly battled
my loudest fears,
my love’s struggles to
breathe in the night
and his failing heart
the chief subject of
of my prayers.
And then he,
my living Chief
would waken—
thanks be to God—
and descend into the day,
greeting me with
“Hey, honey,”
and sitting across
from me with
a sleepy grin while
patiently listening
as I, wide awake,
rattled off whatever
minor epiphanies
I’d gathered that day
like manna in the
desert of my dread,
blissfully unaware
that the reason
for those profound
revelations of
from Ancient of Days
were born of the newer
terrors that had begun
to assail my heart
with the force of a pandemic
(which, oddly,
the entire world
experienced, too).
As I string together
hundreds of day’s worth
of memories,
I again feel the fear
rooted
in the rituals, yet
I recall the moments when
God appeared,
and the more hopeful
fact of Bill’s appearing,
day after day,
the figurative and the literal
rooting acceptance
of mystery in my soul,
and so
I say to my son,
“No! It is holy,”
and he understands,
having met our God
in holy places, too.
Kitti Murray
December, 2023


I relate so much to your posts/poems and writings. Thanks again for sharing!