Skimpy pajamas

“He made the veil of violet, scarlet, crimson, and fine linen; he worked cherubs on it.”

To Eaton’s, they were “cotton shorty pajamas”

In dark red and blue, 
with navy piping around the lapels.

I thought of them as my skimpy pajamas.

I was wearing them that morning

in late spring or early summer

when I woke up to voices in the backyard:

my mother and younger brother,

bent together like two conspirators,

though he was too young to know

what he was a party to.

I ran as fast as I could

downstairs,

through the kitchen,

out the back door,

across the cold, dew-soaked grass

to my little garden

where my mother was hurrying to bury

Soot’s fourth kitten,

the runt of the litter,

sickly from birth,

dead overnight

and now being buried without me there,

before I woke up

as if hiding the tiny body in the earth

would guarantee it had never existed...

If only all sorrows could be so easily put away

and not leave you standing there

watching and shivering.

I wrote this poem while waiting for Greg while he had a spiritual direction session with one of the sisters of St. Joseph. She had found an unoccupied room for me with some books, an armchair, a lamp, and a side table on which there was a bible opened to Chronicles. 
After I finished writing the poem, which had been stewing round in my head for a while, I thought, out of curiosity, to play the game of pointing to a passage and then seeing if it had any relevance for me.

I held my finger over the open book and plopped in the middle of the left page. It landed on the verse quoted above (2 Chronicles Chap 3, verse 14). Cotton shorty pajamas indeed! I was, of course, startled by the unexpected synchronicity.

©February 11, 2015