The Drowning Moment

is when he of the Mount of Olives whom you believe keeps the night watch catches you by surprise with a wash over your spirit like Baptism, when he suddenly exists "de facto" as you are walking, just as you always do, on blood-red carpet toward a priest who will place in the palm of your hand bread for which you are the supplicant, when words you recited by rote only moments ago become alive in bas-relief as solid as sentences carved in stone, and the song you were humming softly because you have always loved the melody resurrects a white-robed schoolgirl in a long ago choir stall. Those words, the familiar music, tugging at your heart, "O saving Victim, opening wide the gates of heav'n to man below," assail you with such a sense of presence, that you are like the angelic child in front of you who has fallen fast asleep, certain of the safety of his mother's arms: Body to body, warmth to warmth -- trustful of the lanyard. Then, at home in Sunday calm, the chameleon sky is an uncomplicated azure, no cloud in sight, (though marshmallow cumulus delivers its own delight.) Beyond a lakeside screened-in porch, three ducklings navigate their outpost, becoming more and more adventurous, their every paddle sending a V for Victory, trailing in their wake toward the Watcher in the Rye, while a platoon of turtles periscope the surface with an inquisitive why? And nothing, but nothing, interrupts the anhinga, drying his wings, outspread to the sky like Jesus in anguish on the cross in these moments so sublime, you gladly, but gladly, would go under for the third time.