Of Momentary Dark

Today, Momentary Dark is missing. After I send the kids off to school, put in the laundry, pull off the plastic on the garden beds, I sit down at my desk, intent on writing about something that happened to me in the archive on Thursday. One of the first boxes I opened contained a correspondence that seemed meant for my eyes only – not my own which I found later and which I did not care a whit to look at – but something else. It was a short correspondence between Margaret and another writer, both of whom were Christians, and who were struggling with each other, and also with a great darkness that perplexed, troubled, and saddened both of them. I read the correspondence furtively and then later, recounting it to my husband, I wept.

Momentary Dark was in that box. One copy alone, nothing else. All weekend long, I thought about that correspondence, and about that book in that box. I’d taken out Momentary Dark in my raid on the library for Margaret’s poetry, and quoted from it already in a past blog posting. I decided that on Monday (today) I would read more of that book and perhaps glean from it the wisdom in it that must somehow have grappled with the darkness I read about in the correspondence. I also wanted to read this book because its title was different than the others. For yes, in the lives of all – pessimist or optimist, believer or non – there is momentary dark.

Strangely, the book this morning is missing. I clear off my desk in an attempt to find it, but it's disappeared as if whisked out of sight. All the other of Margaret’s titles I’ve taken out of the library are here – the three volumes of Always Now, Not Yet But Still, Concrete and Wild Carrot, Winter Sun, and the Pascal lectures monograph. But no sign of Momentary Dark, anywhere. I wonder where it’s gone.

I flip through Always Now, thinking that Momentary Dark might be in there, but Momentary Dark came after Always Now. Momentary Dark was Margaret’s last published book. It appeared in 2006, a year before her death. In fact, its title does not even appear on Margaret’s list of published works on the Margaret Avison website that I’ve put on my list of links. I find one link from M & S that contains a synopsis of the book and a list of the poems, but I dearly want the book in hand. Momentary Dark, where are you? What hand has hid you from my sight this day?