Poetry – Page 15 – This Jolly Beggar

On Easter

Easter steals between the clouds
To waken weary hearts
From the sorrows of the night
Into glorious morn.

The light falls pale on frozen time
That on a graveside dwells;
The warmth it casts cannot be felt
Until the stillness breaks.

Death quakes to hear the voice of One
Who forever broke its chains
Rising o’er the sleeping world
And one whose heart is torn.

Eternal light throws back the shroud
And grief gives way to joy
As turning we greet the risen King
And hope where there was none.

In a Dark Hour

ezekiels-vision-of-the-valley-of-dry-bones-what-does-it-mean_0

3 A.M.

Awakened to an eerie self-examination of the soul
on the steel-cold surface under surgically precise lights
unentombing cancers, contagion-carrying arteries, dismembered
corruption to the dispassionate gaze of an Enemy brooding,
brooding.

3:20 A.M.

Still sweating under the administered fumes seeping
through pores, guilt-driven language of parents driven
from home to carnage of children preying on children, warfare
of wretched depravity in the eyes of a man, a woman seething,
seething.

3:40 A.M.

Cannot speak, cannot hear, cannot see, cannot feel anything
but the weight of irreversible fate, the darts of the Enemy
injections of delirious oblivion only to awaken to endless night
where no refuge lies from grief and fear and the hate pursuing,
pursuing.

4:00 A.M.

Helpless, my tongue dry, the light dims, darkness closes in,
but a voice is heard, a minister to prophesy over the bitter
collocation of bones, unholy, “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!”-
prophesy!- in the body and the blood a Life that is not mine breathes,
breathes.

DailyPostPrompt: eerie

The Promises, the Giver

crepuscular-panorama — Jacob’s Ladder Crepuscular Panorama/Wikipedia

If in all the world I could trust just you
To forever keep a promise or two
I’d give my soul to you, my dear,
With many a kiss and nary a fear
Believing your promises were safe and true
And I had nothing to fear from you.

Continue reading “The Promises, the Giver”

Edge of Original

I’ve been on the edge of “original” all my life,
she said, reaching for the top shelf in the grocer’s aisle,
and teetering on her toes, tips of her fingers on the jam
she hoped to coax forward but pushed further back;
still probing, she continued to ruminate long-
windedly while His gaze receded farther from her
who held her origin in His heart which alone knew
who she was apart from the jam, the cart, the grocer’s
aisle while she strained in pursuit of a receding jar
leaving behind uniqueness in the receding Light.

DailyPostPrompt: original

Blind Openings

The Blind Leading the Blind, Galerie Laurent Godin

Open doors, open arms, open conversation
Open thoughts meant to charm
Open-ended questions

Continue reading “Blind Openings”

Struggle’s End

The lamb has yet to lay down with the lion
There is no peace in any day and age
Look beyond your walls! Can you not see
Enemies at the gates, barbarians rising
To receive as their bounty your life,
Your fortune, your freedom denied?

So cries one, and still another rages,
Voices of confusion and calamity.
Where will you go, with whom will you struggle
To find the security you seek within your walls
Where disease and misfortune and betrayal
Lurk at corners beyond your control?

Life in all its disarray where even within your soul
The enemy lurks to cause you to despair when hope
Seems all but lost, meaning all but gone, love
All but illusion – Where then to find the truth
That sets free? Who the author and the champion?
Who the founder and the deliverer – but God?

images

John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

DailyPostPrompt: Struggle

Purpose Full

Continue reading “Purpose Full”

The Sacrifice

(A retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac)

A weary journey, a wakeful night,
They left their camp before daylight
An old man carrying the weight of years
Wrinkled cheeks wet with tears
At hearing the young boy at his side
Prattle on with childish pride
That he alone had been chosen
To help his father on this mission.

Continue reading “The Sacrifice”

Sea Castles

seagulls-sea-640

He had waded out too far
The boy in the sea
Knee-deep he stood
As the tide withdrew
Drawing bridges round his toes
Dipped in seaweed

On a mermaid watch
Spying only undulating glass
Alluring sheets of metal grey,
Gathering towers, sparkling spires,
Sudden with a dragon’s curve

And he, turning away too late
To shore, felt the sand give way
Beneath shifting feet of clay,
Merman knee-deep no longer
Arms flailing, gasping watery riddles

Above the cresting wave
Choking fear and salt water
Blinded eyes seeing royal fury
Losing air, light, sky, dreams
In a torrent of sea

Till he grew legs again
Bones plucked from the foam
Tossed back onto the shore
Spluttering at the eddying pool
From which he rose

Like a bird flapping forgotten wings
Then dropping like a stone
On to his knees
Beside fallen sea castles.

dVerse Poets Pub: OLN #278 Rejoice!
Re-posted on JollyBeggar.com
Originally posted on PilgrimDreams.com

John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.