Toes again
In the virgin soil
All the running,
The years, the misplaced faith
In our irrevocable brokenness
And I return to wade in the waves
Of the great unknown

A great secret
Hidden all these years
In the plainest sight:
Everyone’s broken.
Our existence
Is an inalienable right
And blessed privilege.

And the standard
Is to breathe
Toe the ebb and flow
And fail
And believe
And live on.

I’ve been the foreigner
In every land I’ve lived
Seeking strangers to give
Alms of recognition
My ambition
To form a family
Bonded by noble desires,
But I’m ever the outlier
And my search is finished;
I return- I am diminished
And as I should be.
Slipping quietly from view
While foreigners run to and fro
Mending all the world’s woes
I will sit in the brokenness
That birthed me,

Because it’s the right thing to do.

I used to believe the open road
Healed all wounds
And how it soothed
The standing heat of idle days
Rolled out every which way
But home.

These roads became a vascular web,
A spaghetti junction,
Serving a single function:
Protecting the pocket that
Would not heal
Untouched.

Using these temporary escapes
To instead restore, to expose,
To open the pocket, to close
The distance between two points
And no one untraveled
Knows the pain,

The hope,

The strength it takes
To roll up the pavement.

This is a fraught, complicated,
No-win situation.
I can find no solution
To the dilemma I’m in
Nothing that satisfies
My body often churned
I struggle to distill
All I’ve seen and learned
By act of will,
I force my next steps
Unsure how to deploy
There’s grief, there’s anguish,
But underneath, there’s joy.

You, who sings over my soul
In every changing season
Are God of all, God with us,
Brokenness is no treason
In the Hands of the Great Physician
I regret no sorrow I’ve seen
When You’ve flooded
Every hidden moment between
With joy inexpressible.