Haiku - Halos

and they walk in with
halos, like everyday saints;
each voice is hymnal.

...

Studying at Macy's, the sunset smeared across the sky through the ambiguous clouds, I was struck when an acquaintance entered and greeted me. I knew her through her voice, the light blinding me to her appearance. I thought of the ways we see one another, the ways we see the world. The light, as it was, and the silhouette - voiced but unknown - heartened me mysteriously. I cannot say exactly how. The scene, the act, it left space for magic, for the divine. Macy's is explicitly Bahai'i and the space is inflected by that. Also, I recently recounted a scene from The Plague by Albert Camus in which the various protagonists converse in the quarantined city. One man says he has been trying to be a saint without God, while the other remarks he has been trying to be a man, to be human, whatever that is. Of course, I am not Camus nor am I stranded in a pestilent city. I wonder if Camus saw saints coming through coffeeshop doorways, or heard the music of their voices when he could not discern friends' faces. I have been interested in returning to church; of course, it is for the community of belief, not the belief itself that draws me. Church opens up space for the divine, for magic to permeate our lives and, though I try to witness that everywhere, sacred spaces are often more permeable than our everyday. Or so I believe. Oh, and one final thing; this is a mild attempt at self-parody given my tendency to enumerate in haiku form; to counter that, I began "in the middle" with "and," left intentionally lower case.

[Note: This entry, minus the haiku itself, was reconstructed from one written in Macy's Coffee House. Internet woes prevented its immediate publication.]