I waited for you
When the night stretched his spine,
I left a light burning
Sleepless at your shrine
Are you still mine?
Who am I
If I’m more myself without you?
All I’ve known follows me to bed,
But I’m a stranger to the view
And I’m afraid to pursue.
We don’t slough off our stories
As a snake’s skin is shed,
We are still standing
Wherever we’ve tread
And wherever lies ahead.
Velvet downpour
In minor strains, and percussion rain
Is the heartbeat under the floor.
Nonsensical words
But her soul is bare, her notes declare
A love invested and interred.
Sorrow no longer weeps
It whistles low, and coos, and flows
In the rich, deep tones from whence it steeps.
Her voice swirls like eddies
Down her chin, spilling free when
She is most unsteady.
The minimalist in me still calls
To trim the fat from every hall
Purging until I scrape the walls
Eliminating the clutter sprawl.
But the mom in me says stay,
A toy in the hall is a toy still in play,
And one by one each toy gives way
To dreadfully quiet days.
A hand to the helm
And an eye to the stars.
Let You be my course and aim,
And be my means both near and far.
Let me hold with cold knuckles
The wheel of obedience
To guide this vessel through fog and foam
With all hope and expedience.
Neither driving blind in darkness
But clear the webbed clouds of desire and doubt,
Through which I strain, but cannot
See Your magnificent route.
Be my works, and be my hope,
And be all You always are
To guide me safely home again,
Be my helm and star!
Waves of faithful
washing over my faithless,
When I despair
as one who is graceless,
You respond
and fear falls baseless.
I know again, it will be okay,
for even if I cease,
Your love continues on
to uphold in perfect peace
where my love stumbles lame,
a slave to consternation and caprice.
Exquisite pain,
Like sharp stones
Cutting into the surface of calm
Sending ripples on alone
To wake the rest.
Molten rock,
Melting joints while
Muscles smolder, sweat, and turn
Pooling in a vile
Puddle of suffering.
Pain in the depths,
The dark bowels of fleshly frame;
Ligament and bone,
Blood and tissue, pain
As the new normal.
You are God of the wind and the root,
and I, a flag between the two;
tethered to the Truth,
bowing, blowing, windstrewn.
No roots of my own, but a tangle
Of knot and cord
And strangled
And held secure.
Falling flat, stretching unfurled,
And always clinging to my stake
In the ground, in this world
I pray You remake.
Unyielding in my doubt,
Compliant with each gale
Rippling me throughout.
You who never fail, don’t fail
Never release, nor relent,
Even when I fall,
Even when I fail to repent.
I was born in captivity,
But on my father’s knee
I heard tales of the homeland:
The land of the jubilee.
I’ve grown, bones stretching,
Skin pulled like a warm coat
On muscles enabling my motion,
But it is never my abode.
I’ve grown inside
The old man’s memories:
The temple at dawn,
The new moon revelries,
The smell of the altar
And the song of the dove
Smoldering and yearning for a home
I’ve seen nothing of,
And it is burning
Always blazing in the pitch black
When the old men said goodbye,
Over the strong, unbroken backs
Of their captors.
The flames of utter destruction
Dancing on stolen bronze,
The silver and gold abductions,
Flickering with screams
Wails of sorrow from the feeble
The sole survivors stumbling through
The blood of their own people,
The clatter of armored enemy.
I’ve seen it all in their eyes,
Heard it in mournful sobs
And whispered lullabies.
In captivity, I cannot know
Does any stone still stand,
Or smolder, or smoke, or can
We ever find our homeland again?
I face my home, which can’t be seen,
And turn my back to where I’m sent.
I praise the God of Just and Merciful
I pour my heart out: I Repent.
I am a Protestant daughter;
My Catholic mother
Birthed me in the water
And I drifted farther
Than she would reach.
I washed up on Neverland.
I read the works of the lost boys
Who also traveled unmanned
Bereft of the pride and poise
That mitigates confession.
An orphan community
A ragamuffin clan,
Who found unity in the impunity
They drank from the hand
Of their Father.
You wrote me off the moment
I seemed like too much trouble,
Pausing only to gawk,
To kick over some rubble,
To find a tale to tell.
I guess I can’t blame you;
You have so much to protect,
And there is nothing so safe
As silence and neglect,
And how could you know
I was never a threat?
viewingcamelot 