Home is Where the Stop is

Maybe in my footworn roads
With silent sunsets, and lone songs,
And quiet doors, and midnight miles
Maybe I’ve been home all along.

Maybe in these futile searches
I’ve been always falling
Drifting, molding into
My own, hidden calling.

Maybe these secrets I plucked,
Like fruit from the wild trees
Along uncharted fields
Will sink the roots I need,

Were always the roots I need.


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.


Lighthouse Sirens

If you can see
Past parting clouds and lowered masks,
Don’t wait for the lull to pass-
Speak quickly.

Weather patterns
Repeat forever, blow in and out,
And sever the lines of communication
A seasoned eye discerns

A word rightly spoken
Can lift the fog of interaction
And expectation to wind;

To see what’s broken
Is to mend.


Rain Torn

Hope is the flower that never blooms
Relentless rain drenches the roots,
Thick stalks reach the heavens
While leaves unfurl and flute

The petals wait in a fetal cocoon.

Pluck it, or tend it, anticipate
In a breathless storm
Defending the defenseless
Awaiting the vivid and worn

To bloom, to justify the eternal wait.


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.


Struggling

How dark the struggle, the sorrow,
The dim days of man’s persistence
Born in blood and water
To a pathless existence,
A rocky ascent through
Briars and thorns,
Fists and the forgotten
Sorrow numbed, joy mourned,
Dumb when questioned,
Deaf when told
The blessing of life is
Growing old.
Wrinkle and fade,
Ebb away, but time
Is all the gift of man.
Death, our crime,
Weighs heavy on our histories.
How dank our intentions,
Turned inward, turned downward,
Too lurid to mention
But never unknown

Until love interrupts.
How sharp the contrast
The breath of God
From now, from ages past
In deep elixir swallows
To soothe the wounds
The fears and fallows
Of fate and faithlessness.


Winter Crystallizing

Sounds of summer lingering
Though day is fading fast
Leap chirping through my window
As wild as they are vast,
Perfect days of teeming life
Unmuted and unmasked,
But silence falls too soon,
Too soon the heat is passed

And another winter’s cast.


Giver of Life

I’m scared to stir the cesspool
But the paralysis of surface tension
Immobilizes the flow of life and
Lends rot and foul to my intentions.

You stirred a pool and troubled waters
Freely healed the one most eager.
My own arms are too short to save.
My fingerfalls are mute and meager.

Be the active voice for me
Plunge Your pure hands into my death
Stir my decay and cleanse my sin
By Your blood, and by Your breath.