Renee at the House of Ruth

Miracles come grudgingly
Don't just happen
Don't just descend upon us
From some spiritual high-up plane
Trumpets blaring as white-faced angels
Proclaim imminent arrival.
Miracles don't just ease in and out of our lives
Making of us better citizens,
steadfaster friends,
kinder bodhisattvas,
gentler lovers,
surer seekers.

They emerge, slowly,
Inch by torturous inch.
Hesitant, even hostile,
A reluctant configuration of
Instinct and happenstance.

Miracles are not volcanoes
but they erupt from an inner core
Hot, festering, greedy
Burning with earthbound violence designed to
rip the ground out from under.

I have known a miracle.

Impulsive explosions that regularly barred her from shelter
A crack habit showing no signs of abating
Desperation disguised as freckles dotting her haunted yellow cheeks.

Month after month
She sat across from me
Scratched metal desk
delineating our separate lives.
She got in my face:
"I know which car is yours."
She pointed to my face:
"I know which scar will go where."
Her rage bubbling wildly,
untempered by a true target.

Instead of slashing my tires, somehow,
She told me her story:
Cast iron pan to the head,
after nighttime visits from a phanton father.
Weeping on a curb, behind her a burnt-out shell of a house.
A daughter torn from her adolescent arms,
never seen again.

I am not sure which is the miracle:
Her very survival
or that in this tormented place,
dank with our own ghosts,
we found each other long enough to give light.