When I turned my face back,
the Sun opened like a holy wound—
a burst of radiant fire
resting on the western edge of day,
slipping gently
into the hands of the horizon.

Its round body swelled with mystery,
a trembling crown of light
in orange, gold, and sacred white—
growing, glowing,
unfolding like unseen wings
stretching across the whole sky,
a full circle of blessing
touching Earth’s quiet skin.

The light poured forward—
a golden current flowing toward my feet—
meeting the November cold
like a prayer softening grief.
Its warmth mingled with the White River below,
where clear water carried life
in small hidden creatures,
each one a whisper of God
moving beneath the surface.

There,
on a small hill of the Boston Mountains,
by the tender White River of Arkansas,
4:15 p.m., November 17, 2025—
Heaven bent low enough
to brush my sorrow.

I had come
a thousand miles
from Tennessee to Texas,
driving into a silence
no words could break—
seeking the souls
who stood in the shadow
of an unthinkable loss.

My niece, left her son, junior in college and beloved,
had crossed the unseen threshold—
a doorway only angels know.
And her mother,
my sister-in-law,
stood trembling in that hollow space
where a mother’s cry reaches God
before it reaches air.

In that stillness,
even the mountains held their breath.
The world grew soft,
as though creation itself
knelt beside us.

And in the quiet,
the Sun whispered a truth
only the grieving can hear—
that love travels farther than death,
that sorrow is a river God also walks beside,
and that sometimes
—only sometimes—
Heaven opens just enough
for its light
to fall gently
on our broken hearts.

Note

This piece was written after I lost my beloved niece—an adult in the middle years of her life—to cancer. Faced with such an early farewell, I set out from Tennessee to Texas to comfort her mother, who had lost her daughter.

Along the highway passing through Arkansas’s White River and the Boston Mountains,
I encountered an unexpected light.
In that moment when the western sky opened like a door,
it felt as if Heaven itself were bending close to our sorrow.

This poem is both a lament and a prayer.
It carries the weight of the grief that gathered over a thousand miles,
and holds a quiet offering of comfort
to the mother who now bears an indescribable loss—
my sister-in-law.

The image of the sun unfolding like wings whispered a simple truth to me:
that love does not end with death,
that God’s presence breathes even in silence,
and that light always finds a way
to rest gently upon our broken hearts.

Through this writing, I hope that anyone walking through grief
may feel, even for a moment, that they do not walk alone.