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Anesthesia
Where was I for that half an hour or so
While somewhere deep inside me they explored?
The body’s secrets mine so far outsoared,
I’d been sent off someplace I didn’t know.
And “sleep” they called it yet somehow a sleep
Without the possibility of dream;
A waking only, really, so it seems,
But waking from a darkness brief and deep.
And who was I, beyond all thought and sense:
No memory, no feeling, no regret;
No self and thus no self-transcending will?
I’d slipped between two seconds’ immanence,
And as my life was turned to silhouette,
Some secret Hand upheld “me” even still.
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The Holy In-Between
Adrift between the infinitely vast
And infinitely small, and bounded by
An unknown future and a choppy past,
A simple soul (for such a one am I)
Must simple means find to beatify
His tiny speck of life, must keep it green
And fresh and warmly good so that thereby
It might give honor to the Great Unseen
Who holds it in the holy in-between.
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Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.
“Anasthesia” is a profound exploration of an experience that not many of us (I would guess) have thought much about before. The octet expresses wonder at that “someplace” where a soul must be when it is put under; the sestet takes it even further by questioning who a person is, or was, during this strange time when “… life was turned to silhouette.” I like the way “The Holy In-Between” portrays some of the ways in which human beings are indeed caught between things — examples with which we can all identify.
These are both beautiful and philosophical poems. I found Anaesthesia a bit unsettling but in a positive way. Thank you
We are often reminded of our fragile attachment to our existence. This posing of your own rational eschatology in both poems is at once philosophical and theological bringing into focus our own temporary terrestrial nature and eventual departure for destinations prepared for us by the “Great Unseen.” These are admirable probes that raise as many questions, if not more, than it answers leaving us adrift to our own internal musings.
As I was once under anesthesia for minor surgery, your poem provides an accurate description.
I like a poet who ventures onto untrodden ground. That’s you, Jeffrey.