Ann Marie Dell graduated from Southern Methodist University in December 2023 with a Doctor of Liberal Studies degree. Her area of concentration is the Holocaust.
poetry
Nocturne
Ann Marie Dell, Southern Methodist University
Silently it beckons me.
In the night it waits for me.
Will passing clouds conceal from me
this wonder and its majesty?
Searching eyes seek patiently
and scan the heavens hopefully,
willing that a glimpse may be
the answer to this pilgrim’s plea.
Night air settles languidly.
All creatures sense proximity.
Will Nature’s glor’ous scenery
appear to grace this reverie?
And then it happens, magically.
My wish fulfilled entirely.
Clouds part and oh, so blessedly,
reveal the orb I’ve longed to see.
Then silence speaks its words to me,
telling of the memory
of time and all eternity,
of life and its mortality,
of power and simplicity,
and grandeur and humility,
of faith, responsibility,
and family and destiny.
My body falls away from me.
My spirit rises up to be
enveloped in the Entity
and loosed from this life’s gravity.
No misery, catastrophe,
or sorrow now can limit me.
The oneness and the liberty
enfolding and embracing me.
Oh that I might feel endlessly
such welling up inside of me!
What peace, and joy, tranquility
ensconced amidst this dreamery.
This presence is my ecstasy,
a fleeting moment granted me,
that once again so suddenly
slips back into obscurity.
The spell is broken, finally.
The world returns and calls to me.
Yet now my heart beats happily
infused with luminosity.
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