Under The Shallow Water: A Collection

Obscurity and Wonder: A Story for Christmas

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The fog was impenetrable, the kind that makes cold turn black and freeze. That year the night wrapped the homeless in its bosom, bringing the peace of mortal sleep. The night had brought its gift and all was silent.

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Peering out my window at the frozen blackness I saw the dimmest light, like a single drop of blood in the sky. Diffusing through my window, it spilled its crimson presence onto the floor of my bedroom like a false dawn, gloomy and anemic.

Then the darkness itself began to yield before the strange spectacle, and the light grew. Now brilliant, it filled my room with a radiant vermillion incandescence.

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I became aware of a rising clamor, a marauding tumult in the distance. Like thunder, terrifying in its obscurity, it hurtled recklessly through the haze and grew to a claustrophobic magnitude.

I was now enveloped in burning light like the white hot center of a brilliant flame. Then, like a prophet of Yahweh I beheld the great beast galloping toward me, his enormous equine frame Homeric in scale and gravity, and before him blazed the dissolving light.

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He drew closer and the terrifying reckless thunder that had betrayed his approach began to resolve into a familiar predictable rhythm.

As I wondered at the beast he grunted, and a great blast of steam dissolved the surrounding obscurity. Now I beheld that the one light was two. In place of a single galloping beast there were twin Baldwin Berkshires, oiled to a shining Stygian black. They were side by side, and on the front of each colossal locomotive blazed a headlamp as bright and immortal as the dazzling sun.

Transfixed by these Herculean locomotives I marveled, heliophilic, at the blazing headlamps, and I began to feel the radiant heat as I watched the color of the lights shift through a celestial sea of reds, golds, and whites. Casting crackling auroras before them these two ancient comets propelled a thunderous race, a relentless annual course through the trackless northern skies.

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Now these orbiting comets slowed and came to a stop before me. Enormous jets of steam heaved from both locomotives. Then as a moon obscures the sun a figure stepped before the light like an eclipse.

He approached and again I stood transfixed in wonder. The corona of the eclipse shone around him, a shifting supernova of brilliant light wreathing his head, and his immense frame was clothed in crimson robes.

Before me now I looked into his eyes and in miraculous epiphany saw they were filled with the cosmos. Then he smiled, and in his face shone the galaxies, terrifying and wonderful to behold. When he breathed I saw the brilliance of his mastery over innovation and mercy. He had who brought the obscurity of this night in order to herald the blazing morning in shattering glory.

Through all this his massive frame continued to obscure the light, casting an enveloping shadow over me like a father's footprint, intimate and unattainable, and I became suddenly aware of my minuscule absurdity before him. He regarded me with intent and held out his hand. In it was an object, even more minuscule than I and with instinctive need and wonder I took it.

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Now the vision shifted as I studied the gift in my hand. It was a mustard seed, an embryo pregnant with ancient mandate imprinted with perfection and like the headlamps it burned with relentless intent. Even now as I held it in my hand it was aflame, consuming the surrounding darkness.

As I gazed into the miracle it spoke with the voice of life itself.

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It Is.