NaPoWriMo: “A Holy Moment at Costco”
It was just before Christmas.
The sky was not having it.
It smashed glasses of sleet down on the pavement,
opened fire hydrants of rain, smacked us with wild,
yowling gusts of wind. You had to hold on to your cart
to keep from blowing away in the parking lot.
Inside Costco, we scrambled around with lists.
We crossed items off, one by one. Then, pushing
our heavy loads, we made a mad dash for
the checkout stands where we waited
in crawling, torpid, endless lines so long
you might fall asleep on your feet
waiting.
I was at the beginning of this mess,
in the electronics aisle
comparing prices, sizes, stats —
when suddenly
a massive sigh of exoneration
heaved through the building
and the lights went out.
And not just the lights, either.
The cash registers, the hum of the heaters,
every machine in the whole building.
The silence that took over
turned all our big, staticky problems
into into dandelion seed
sand blew them away.
Nobody moved.
We looked around, smiling and shy.
The thing I will never forget about
this moment, about standing still
in that big, dark, densely populated place
is the bone deep, physical relief
of that silence.
We all felt it.
And no one spoke.
But if we did, it was
in the whispers you might use
during a total eclipse of the sun,
or looking up inside the Sistine Chapel,
or looking down at your sleeping newborn baby.