Prophecy’s basket of wares is examined for wear and tear. Signature pieces are unfurled, instantly framed to coordinate time and place, and shoppers, more than a little curious clutch their purse – it could be a blessing, it could be a curse- ask as if reciting a verse, “When shall this thing be?”
Is it the purview of Prophecy to whet the lips with guarded slips of a future, lest men who are asleep while awake are jolted by the alarm to spring into action? Or is it to preview a catastrophe that shall befall with a narrow window of avoidance or embrace if at all hence the inevitable question, “When shall these things be?”
What are Prophecy’s intentions? For the ease with which glimpses are teased, sunrise interrupts midnight, ohs and ahs are silenced by shrieks of incomprehensible incredulity, and affirmations are decreed matter of factly, a world ‘unboundaried’ by the perimeter of experience beyond which only folly, self-delusion, and mad hatters live you and I are thrust to the center of an expanding universe breathless from the revelations’ intonation and demands.
In other times, the terror of such forecast would caution exuberance, lest one sets off on a journey for which there is no road or begins to wade the River of No Return armed only with the lingering images scarred on his mumbling soul.
But Prophecy is no ordinary peddler, neither is the breathlessness he inspires. Alas, some purses are clutched shut to prevent buyer’s remorse. Not mine, I had bought tomorrow with all I had and a Promissory Note. I was on the other side of an expanded world.
Yet if I ask you what Prophecy is, you may foretell a dreaded hell that is heaven lost. Or the agony, grief, and loss of a sneak peek in which X marks the spot, is so unbearably hot that you had to ask, not just what and where but when.
For one would be foolhardy not to seek to know to escape a damning fate. At which point I am beyond flabbergasted. So let me ask again, “What is Prophecy?”
Peter Peterkin, Readers Bureau, Contributor
Edited by Jesus Chan
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