"Blue Lights, New Year's Day 2004"
      by Tom Hamill

E-zine 1
May 2005

Soul Foraging:
Searching for self

Short Stories
Essays
Art and Photography
Poetry


Blue Lights
New Year's Day 2004

As a small boy, I saw blue lights.
They would call me when my parents were asleep.
I knew their voice, and would greet them in the small hours
     in their home in the gold drapes, as they
         flickered phosphorescent
              on that great pane window,
                   a giant oak of cat perches
                       and the murmur of Lake Ronkonkoma
                           their theatrical ambiance.

The blue lights went away,
     along with many of the carnival moments of childhood.
         I attributed their ephemeral existence
             to my mother’s short career as a freelance
                 psychic. I thought they had skidded off the ouija board or
                     too many oily palms read or had been poisoned by those
                         musty tea leaves or even conjured up and then dismissed by a
                             séance gone awry.

Forty years later, I am sitting in a small church
     meditating on the Gospel
         a thunderous Pacific storm in my ears
               a chalkboard begging for gnosis in
                    my closed eyes. Then the chalkboard turns into
                         papyrus burning with the same blue lights that had
                              left me in our home by the lake.

I then knew that the blue lights were angels.