Calligraph for a Psalm Beginning with the Letter O
Terry E. Hill
I used to think words were sacred, then syllables
were enough, now the first letter only, an O,
even the first black-ink curve immense and sweeping
like silence breaking open, the infant’s first cry.
The universe was empty before that curve began,
silence and stillness so vast and pure not even a feather
falling against the stones of an ancient village.
Not even the weight of its echo.
The pause was immeasurable before that first breath,
before the shoulder of longing, the newborn push
of faith, and the pause repeats
before each numberless beginning.
Then the reciprocities of inkwell and nib to paper,
the surface tension holds and glistens, then releases
a quick capillarity awash into waiting pores,
an indelible sluice amidst the fiber tangle.
Moist wake trailing behind, the lustrous flow
circles around until finally leaning forward
to catch its own tail and close open an O,
a new lumen into the crisscrossed tangle of reality.
I enter and become the day as it is, wet with Thou.
Terry E. Hill is a physician in Oakland, California, with a long history of publishing in healthcare and a more recent history in literature, e.g., in The Healing Muse and the All Shall Be Well Anthology. He grew up in rural Georgia but earned his B.A. in literature from Reed College.
