Category Archives: Passion

Standing

Desperate for The Fount again,
Always unhinged, and swinging wide
My pride gets crushed in my own disdain
By all in life I can’t sustain.

Treading in the shallow pool of thought and activity,
Lost in the flow of humanity, weighted with a surface view
By failure, like a heavy noose, I see all cloud and wave
With no desire to cry out to be saved.

My shrouded sky is split by sudden light
Cracking through my night, my hopelessness
Unable to cope with this; these expectations
That decay into hesitations embedded.

Under the weight of dread, but hope
Is no frail concept.

It is the ground beneath us.


Insubordination

These are Godless times.
We write Him out of His own history,
Condemn Him for our crimes
And celebrate His mystery

As our innovation.

We are a Godless people
Who do not work the field,
But eat our bellies full
Of everything that appeals

To our wandering wisdoms
And desires.


Longer Shadows Fall

When did this first begin
The sleepless nights?
The restless thoughts?

I opened the Book again,
I read about men of might,
The wars they fought

Waged against their Maker
A brief desire to lend the ear,
But hubris on their faces

Urged them to forsake, or
Attack with no fear
Of their creaturely places

Before the God of all fury and graces.


A Light Scattering

See me
Wrapped in this black shroud,
A wandering, whistling cloud
Free me
To some purpose, some passion
Or keep me in this bastion
Secure
Only thin the haze that blinds me
Spill kindness, the kind that reminds me
To endure.


Aftershocks

Palpable shame demands a distraction
Same old reactions, and inaction allows
The ember to sear into flesh,
Toss it around to remember it less,
To arouse less suspicion
Or delay the imposition of conscience
And whatever legal terms apply.
A nonsense-binge denies the evident,
But hinges on turning a blind-eye
To the relevant and essential.

An element of dismissal
In the realm of consequential.


Expectations

Half the pleasure is in the hope
The child awake on Christmas night
Envisioning some unknown heights
Of bliss, awaiting first light
To awaken their scope.

Half the agony is in the fear,
The woman on the edge of labor pains,
With everything to lose, or to gain,
On the other end of unsustained,
Unmeasured anguish drawing near.

All that we anticipate
Always becoming half our fate.


Harvest Swoon

There was a time when you were near,
And our tender years unsung
All my love was in my heart,
But never on my tongue
And shadows fell on quiet thoughts
Before our years were wrung.

Many times my blood’s been hot
Deafening in my ear,
I spoke the things I never ought,
And you never ought to hear
And distance wrapped its scaly tail
Around my words severe.

Regret is grown from planted seeds,
And blooms on either side
The stream of man’s timeline
His cowardice and pride
Fertilizes his fruitful ground
Reaping woe betide

And who can say what yields more dread
The gush of malice spoken
Or the love that’s left unsaid?


The Endless Coil

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.


Put Off Till Tomorrow

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.


Driftword

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.