I keep throwing words at You
Thinking it will somehow change
What has been, what must be:
The numb new strange.

I believed You.

All these years I’ve kept my sprit tender
To hear, to love, to give
Now it hardens in my hands-
I want to live

Where are You?

I’m about to leave this place
And You have multiplied my daily bread
But the distance will cement
The rejected, cold, dead

Woman I’ve become.

Forgive me for moving here,
For everything I put the children through.
If the people here ever care to ask,
Forgive them too.

If You count sin, who could stand?

I guess it’s time to go.
I’ve been so wrong
Guessing what You were doing
It’s gone on so long

I’ve built my walls.

I’m not sure anything
Can penetrate my defenses
Grief has severed me and
Scar-tissued my senses.

This cycle closes the circuit.

In just a moment,
I won’t want anything to do with any of them ever again.

Remember Your promise.
Remember Your maidservant.

I struggle to remember
The promise You made
The word You gave
That carried me out of my grave

It all seems lost.

I believed in love
Do I still?
Save me ere I perish.
Don’t let them all kill

The girl You alone have valued.

I have been spoiled.
I am foolish and ignorant.
I wanted someone to contradict
But they were all in agreement

And the bereavement leaves me in arrears,
Inconsolable, in tears no one marks

But You, right?

I can’t see love ahead, no matter
How far down the road I look
All my love has ever been
Was a worm on a hook,
A chicken neck in a crab pot,

A pathetic little girl
Apologizing for being hurt.
It’s no wonder
I’ve never been worth
A gentle hand.

They were all right about me.
I secede.

The truth is, and I can’t say why,
But I love Canton, MO still.
This place exposed my worst,
And broke my will,
Is that why I love them?

I have to get away, to restore
To my children what is lost.
This place of fist, of teeth,
Has acquired a severe cost
Their childhood has eaten.

I am more alone than ever before
And the weight is solely mine to bear
But I must do what must be done-
Whatever it takes to care
For my brood, as best I can.

I don’t understand
The loss of this run,
This profound tragedy,
There’s so much I should have done
To protect them better.

But I am committed
To preserving the last years
Of their innocence
Engaging them beyond fear
With the world outside.

They are all that matter now,
All that ever did.

Halfway across the map,
Something between roam
And color-bearing crusade,
I sought after HOME
That mysterious happening
Pulsing in the soul
Like a lighthouse flashing
The weary traveler’s goal.
Home is the tune by which
The back of the brain lives beset:
That song you won’t remember,
Nor can you ever forget
But a westerly gust
Filled my ears
With longing like drumbeats
Though the source was unclear
I followed this tune
Through the tangled trees
By coastline and ridgeline
Over bridge, out of lee,
Landing empty-handed,
All my provisions hard-spent,
Bearing all degradations
To pay my children’s rent

The singular gravity
That pulled me inland
Stands too good for me
Appraisals now rend
My tender torn dignity
I am kicked by strangers
Because I am not worthy
Of protection from danger
And the song I so loved
That leaves me far-flung
Is beyond my own voice;
It must remain unsung.
How foolish I’ve been!
What a fool I am
To wager all I was
For a passing West Wind.

Now I must decide whether
To gaze from the gutter, day after day,
Or restore my empty fortunes
By moving away

From the Masterpiece.

The storm struck
With closed fist raised high
Falling, rising, falling again
As the bell tolls nigh
The ornations all stripped away
Torn from hinge and frame
Lost to the easterly wind
Only exposed caissons remain
But all is never truly lost
If You stand in the midst
Though the evicted void
Of spinning winds and pelting mists
Echo the phantom limbs
Of plundered spaces
Even the absences
Are smoothed by Your graces.

Even when everything that still feels
Hurts.

You warned the storm approached
At the first, You set me free to flee,
But told me if I stayed in trust
You would make a blessing of me.

I have stood this ground
Even if only collapsed upon it.
If the day could be weathered,
To my broken best, I’ve won it.

There is only one force firm enough,
To keep my feet from flight,
To force me to grieve through,
To face the demons of the night

One alone: I believe You.

I’m not sure I believe anything else,
But…

I believe You beyond my senses,
I believe You above the storm.

You found me in this place
And refused to let go

Your name is Great:
A thunder that divides,
But Your great gentleness
Coming alongside,
Catching the tears,
Soothing the broken child
Who bites Your hand,
And rants, and writhes wild-
It’s Your gentleness
That shakes my foundations.
Forgive my unforgiveness,
My briney imprecations;
I returned violence for violence.
Oh, my blinded audacity!
Yet You, Weaver of the Impossible,
Persevered in pertinacity.
You walked with me
A country mile.
You defended me
In the din of the vile,
In the lair of the lewd,
You preserved my purity.
You laid Your unchangeable name
As my unbreakable surety,

Forgive me the groanings of my immaturity.

All I hope to know, to show,
Is the loving glow of Your face.

As this season closes shut
And the storm-strewn days
Stretch across the foreign lawn
In chaotic, abandoned arrays
Sprawling in a static wave-
A farewell in a rearview
Before the forgotten hush
Sweeps the old under the new.

I’m sorry I blamed them
For not throwing me a rope,
For the absence of a safe corner.
I put the responsibility of hope
On their otherwise occupied shoulders.
In all my upcoming miles
I pray I lose the complaints
And keep the smiles.

This was a brutal season
And there is relief in the goodbye
And some sorrow;
I know how hard I tried.
I know where my efforts ran dry.

I’m ready to put it all aside,
And drive.

I feel the change in air pressure,
In gravity, in weight
I am falling backwards
Out of this place
This occurring singularity
Presenting itself like fate
With all wonder and horror
Simultaneously trapped in the space
Between waiting rooms,
Strangers queued, like bait,
Which realm was the nightmare?
Which reality is apace
Of racing time, and drifting rays,
And the cold gray that lies in state
At the end of the queue?
I shroud my face

From this day forward.

My world was always spinning.
Disembodied hands
Pushing, pinching, pulling,
Before I could stand
Always too soft, too spun,
Too broken on the wheel
Of living, moving, having being:
The wound created to heal.

And in every rough-hewn fingerprint
They left behind
Is a tender design,
A spinning whorl of the Divine.

You are the Potter-King;
You waste no clay
On Your spinning wheel.
There has never been a day
You did not care for me;
You’ve had me in Hand.
No turn can change
The work You have planned,

And I am Your poem,
And You are my All.
Shape the pain, shape the day-
I yield to Your call.

Thank You for Your tenderness,
The gentleness in Your craft
Thank You for providing
In every breath I draft
Comfort and companionship.
No one can stop You.
I believe with all that I am
Or may be: You are True.

Your promises are sure
Like the west wind
Collecting afar
And returning again

I don’t know
What You are molding
But I trust Your palm
Inscribed, upholding
You brace my gaps,
And make me whole,
While broken still,
You mend my holes

Oh Great I AM,
The Benevolent
Sculpter of souls.