viewingcamelot

All the ground I’ve gained
The least two weeks
Scales down behind me
As I rejoice at the peak:
Praises and communion,
But the old, familiar enemy
Brings my body to a halt:
A pain-wracked cacophony.
This time we set aside to celebrate
Now in bed, I pray relief
To force this physical aggressor
Return the blade into the sheath
How deeply I desire mission
A life spent tending the soil
In the great vineyard
Wherein the fruit may never spoil-
Father, use the pain that grinds me,
Use my willingness and my sin,
To feed the sheep You send me,
To be Your fisher of men

From this age unto the end.

I close my eyes to daylight,
Lulled to deepest sleep
By the gently lapping bay
In which I’m steeped
So tiny no one saw at the first
Whether I lived or died
But You carried me to the river
And dipped my feet in the tide

Merely a child stretching her legs,
Unable to walk, but I could see
Our essence is imprinted
By the timeline of eternity,
I felt the hours stretching before me,
The suffering, the weight, I cried
For the longevity of shadows
You washed my fears in the tide

I gazed upriver long
At the cost I once must pay
And I purposed, even then,
To give it all away
You set me apart for the task
The defiled You purified
You committed me to You
Baptized in the tide

Stumbling along the shoreline,
Floundering in the waves,
Every movement forward
I cried out to be saved
And You gently held my head
In the hands that sanctified,
You taught me to tread water
As I navigate the tide.

So far from where I began
But when I close my eyes to rest
I hear the water lapping
As the heartbeat in my chest
Silk waves folding around me
As a veil around her bride,
And I remember our communion
Mingled in the tide.

As each new shoreline passes by
You add joy into my journey
The unexpected blossom
Of unsuspected yearning
Constant in the ebb and flow
You stand with legs astride
Like mighty oaks in root
Unmovable by the tide

Your branches reaching every shore
I cling to You or drown
The Golden Sunlight dances down
Upon Your priestly crown
And praise erupts as crashing waves
Tossed from deep inside-
My God of every shore;
My God of every tide!

I strain to see the port
Wherein my journey ends
I’ve never been this close before,
Surpassed so many bends,
But I know the destination
Will be the journey satisfied;
Your presence marks the value
Of every passing tide.

Here as my flesh
Wrings my sleeping hours
I breathe in peace,
Considering the flowers
Of grace bloomed
Through my many years,
Pushing through topsoil,
In the sweat and struggle and fears,
You cultivated an orchid
In a landfill.
I turn to the sun,
And You warm me still.
You are so very good.
Who could compare?
With simple words
You dredged despair,
And transformed the slime,
The loss, the rubble
Into a home
Free from the troubles
Inherent in the origins-
You made a sum
Greater than the parts,
Because of our plus One.
Who could have seen
In those days of unfolding
The whole, intact beauty
You continued molding

From our broken pieces-

Hallelujah, God of Kindness,
And may You always be celebrated!

I don’t need goodbyes.
They stay crisp, preserved,
Since some folks can’t handle them,
And some don’t deserve ’em.
Separations lined up like shots,
Fast and silent, down the hatch,
A lightning round
Awaiting stealthy dispatch
And the silence killed
The little bit left alive
That tiny new thing
That might have survived
If selfish sins
Weren’t treated as holy relics:
Velvet ropes protecting idols
Eternally derelict
Self-consumed and consuming
And those they claim to seek
Cannot fill their hungry guts
Pouring the blood of the meek
In deceitful rage
On the idol’s throne
A scene so revolting
They must be left alone
With the gods they chose
To repent someday, or die-
So I pick up my pack, slip out the back,
And whisper no goodbyes.

They put me on hold
And jazz
Swirled me away to brighter days
Soaking up the sunbaked sadness
Of broken living
so many generations in
It happens after the funerals
that moment you decide to begin again
And the world continues
Like it isn’t some strange new thing
Like it hasn’t noticed
All the black you’ve been wearing
In the summer sun
While the jazz plays on
They left me on hold
The days
That aged me.

Magnificent complexities!
This body that sprawls and flexes,
Breathes deep, bawls for necessities,
Excavates the keep and climbs the vertices,
And each piece fits into another
In set order, foot to knee to hip,
Mother and Daughter, Father and Brother,
But placement is less than kinship

Though one piece may not fit into another,
It need not imply other.

I am picking up the pieces out of the heap,
And they start clicking together
It might have to do with the company I keep,
And the storms I have weathered
If one member can employ what they are
and wound another, then placement matters
And for my design, to defer
Is to yield courage, to shatter

The hope indwelling immediate obedience, in meaningful connection
In the wilds of trust and His leading in the moment-

My moment has come; it’s time for me to trust
In the design He gave me,

And I trust Him.

Wracked through my core,
One more week before
The insurance man bows, clicks his heels,
And opens my doctor’s doors.

My contents simmer hot
I’ve got the body of a teapot
The thick glaze contains the fractured bits, but even moments
Of rough handling cannot be forgotten

By bone china.

When laughter rose heavenward,
And thoughts laid bare in delicate repose,
When souls opened to share
And I blended with those,
Then came the long trip home
Like waves eroding rock
In relentless assault, buffeted
By a thousand shocks
Your words smashed my core
And left my ears to ring since
You forced me to kneel
And for the sin of being, repent.
How you rearranged the day
Exposing every kindness invested
As my humiliation, tokens
Of concealed revulsion, mocking jest,
A world disgusted, but too polite
To make me leave
And I was a child, and you my mother,
And I believed.

The only answer spanning time,
Was to remove me:
My thoughts, my words,
My cumbersome company.
No matter how deep the laughter flows,
How strong the love I’ve known,
No matter how unbroken the relationship
There’s always the trip home.
In so many things we all share blame,
And it is only on me to save me
Yet as an adult, I struggle to put away
What as a child, you gave me.

You were born as they took Iwo Jima
Some distant drum, displaced hum
Trills in your soul- I plead to be heard
But we’ve already succumbed
These throes are just the undertow
And you’re a genuine tragedy:
What does that make me?

When they called you Mein Führer,
Snickering in scorn,
Describing to me a faded ghost,
But he was flesh when you were born
The comparison to you far closer
In the social memory:
Did it sting?

The nations united that year;
It’s staggering to think of all you saw
You travelled so long,
And what is your flaw?
Erased limbs, smudged names,
You’re a blank family tree:
You refused us any history.

I used to wonder what broke you;
Some kind of cataclysmic shatter
But your lies filling the vacant spaces-
It was the lies that mattered.
I used to think it was your wounds,
But your sins made you ill-
How murderous to love them still.

I sifted through what I thought I knew,
Through the ashes of your legacy,
I tried to know you
Calling your sin your lunacy
Because it’s crazy to deny reality.
Gentler to say you couldn’t love outside yourself,
Than that you wouldn’t love me.

All the tiny gestures
Overpowered by your refusals
Will I grow fangs?
You can be brutal
Especially when challenged
Your hatred burns in your eyes.
Is it my duty to eat your lies?

I’m gripped with sorrow
Over our scrapbook of farewells
And our hasty inscriptions
Still frames of ancient carousels
Frozen in snapshots:
It feels like you were never mine.
You had complaints; I had your crimes.

And after the last goodbye,
I won’t wish for more time.

And that’s a tragedy.