Upon Finding an Embodied Spiritual Moment in the Grocery Store Aisle

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in an intermittent series of personal reflections on moments of embodied spirituality. Please see the Submission Guidelines for details to share an experience of your own.)

I Was Only Waiting

By Judy Beene Myers

I suddenly stopped in the grocery store aisle

trying to recall what I was there for.

All at once what I needed (whether I came for it or not)

sang through produce, canned goods, frozen foods,

cash registers, cashiers, grocery baggers

—-and children sneaking bags of cookies

into their mothers’ carts.

“Black Bird fly!

            into the light

                 of a dark black night.”*

My son’s favorite tune filled the spaces;

my only son, who died suddenly so many Christmas Eves ago,

or so they told me, but I didn’t believe it then

and surely don’t now.

 —- “ take these broken wings

                                   and let them fly!”*

Right then and there the shelf stacker and me

smilingly lifted our voices in song!

“Black Bird fly!

          All your life

                you were only waiting

                          for this moment to arise!”*

*Blackbird, lyrics by Paul McCartney,
Hopeful essay on Civil Rights Movement and the
“End of Racism in America”