Upon awakening,
Not with my body, but with my soul
When the sunrise not only painted yellow
The gray belly of the clouds but also exposed
That beauty in the darkest of my day.

What miracle must dislodge me from this holding cell
As I live on the edge of one life ready to jump ‘cross a chasm
To the next? What miracle allows me to bid goodbye to so many past lives
Refusing to crossover, their reminders lining my way like polite ghosts
That excuse themselves when I accidentally bump into them?

Finding the twelve, yes, as that will make me the thirteen. I look for them
In the soft eyes of those patient ghosts: I’ve told them that they won’t
Be coming along except in nostalgic memories held in now fading pictures
Of people, places, and things of lives I’ve finished living so long ago.

Rising from my soul’s bed, I set out to find the twelve like jurors
Picked to judge all my life up to this point: See them sitting on their chairs?
The Father, The Son, The Mother, The Fool? See them given absolute
Judgment of all I was as they alone determine all I will ever be
From their daily verdicts onward?

Twelve I need walking into my life in perfect order,
A most rewarding combination to unlock all my potential
And free me from my darkest delusions of self-doubt and worry:
I need them to march in as six perfectly-matched couples
Though I know that all will be as it must be I pray, indeed,
That they will be exactly as I know, exactly as I predicted,
Exactly as they should march down that aisle in the chapel
To be wed on a special day that only the twelve and I know about,
Making me the thirteen.

Do you know those perfect twelve pairing into a perfect six,
Making me the thirteen? Such worlds beyond math transmutating
With chanting: I find such solace here upon awakening building
In hope that such an evolution would ripple through my consciousness
As it upends my corporeal world on this day that must be the day when
Miracle of miracles takes place and I am accelerated even faster
The rocket that I am and have been and will always be.

See, thirteen is the number of death, of change, of revolution, of moving on,
Of moving beyond all that was and is no longer but has still managed to find its way
Around my soul like tenacious vines intertwined and permeating my being.
Death to this time, to this waiting life will come and is coming though will not
Announce itself until I have found those twelve and have myself become the thirteen.
Then the endings will end, the beginnings will begin, and the waiting life
Will become nothing more than another hovering ghost offering polite excuses.

© 2017 by John David Higham: All Rights Reserved
Photo: Curve in Winter Rain (Liberty, PA 1/12/17)