There Are No Atheists in Foxholes

a poem by Jed Schwartz

Voices from the Space2Meditate Community

There Are No Atheists in Foxholes

Huddling apart close in our dim zoom squares.

6:58 am.

Waiting for the meditation to start

with the faint sound of the bell.  

Attention!

As if the silence after

were different from the silence before.

Soldiers, mum, dutiful, fixed, brooding, in our foxholes. 

"Loose lips sink ships". 

Shakily, steadily,

firing gaze at anything that crosses the horizon --

friendly, phony or foe.

***

I'm a late riser—–always been and expected I always would be. Awaking and walking about before sunrise seems almost as alien as venturing on the dark side of the moon.

Yet, each morning for the past two months I've done just that. Arising early, stumbling out of my apartment building toward the coffee truck a few blocks away, returning to my computer in time to gulp down the brew, I take a few breaths and then sign into Zoom before the 7am bell of the Space2Meditate meditation—–the unguided, very silent, early morning meditation. And then I join the 8am guided meditation shortly afterward.

Since I'm a night person, morning sits rarely feel clear and "satisfying" to me the way that afternoon or evening meditations can be. Nevertheless, it has turned out that this daily routine profoundly affects and transforms the rest of my day. To my surprise and joy, I am more aware and open nearly every day.

This morning, pre-dawn, after I got to my seat and joined the Zoom, as I awaited Upayadhi's sounding of the bell, I looked around at myself and the others who had joined on screen and were watchfully sitting in the dark. Each of us in parallel and quiet solitude. Each like a lonesome scout doggedly keeping overnight watch. Vigilant. Keen. Or like a World War I foot soldier carefully peeking out of the trench at the vast expanse beyond. Each of us in our zoom square, this constricted space, isolated and sharply defined, cut forever into the earth years ago in 2020 to protect our bodies from the blitz of the worldwide pandemic. 

In my poem, I've tried to capture the impression that struck me that morning as I anticipated that 7 am bell. When any one of us human beings is faced with the prospect of our own death, we naturally turn inward like the Buddha did. This universal is conveyed in the expression "there are no atheists in foxholes." 

Thank you for meditating with me and for reading my poem.