Thursday, April 16, 2009

Resurrection

I shall no longer shadow-lurk
In the dim, grim darkness,
In my manifold mortality:
He has rolled away the stone.

Here, eager-footed forwards,
Into laughter-chiming light
While the waves call alleluia
And the world is glory-glad.

Not looking back, tomb-tethered,
When His wonder stretches forth
Fluid as love Himself,
Deep as desire.

Someday, star-dancing,
All is finally finished,
Now, in this liminal loveliness
Learning faith’s footing.

Embrace awaits, at the end of the sand journey,
Plunging into Him,
Knowing Life lives, grace-cadenced,
In my Lord.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Easter

Oh that my bones could sing,
That my entrails could dance in extravagant worship
That I could tear the shrouding skies apart!

How, in the light of This Light,
Do I forget so quickly,
And get fooled by death again?

Here there is no mundane, no dull negation.
Entropy is reversed, and the stars remember,
The moment that glory broke through.

The hamsters’ wheel was broken,
The puppets’ strings removed
And the angels couldn’t keep away.

In flesh like mine He did it
Turning history inside out
Giving faith its solemn reason.

The day death died.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Home

My friend was tired. He needed to go home. What does 'home' mean to us at such moments? One day, each one of us, in Christ, will be able to truly come home.

Here the day’s load unbuttons. We slough off
Our formal faces and our rigid smiles
To curl ourselves in kindness like a snail.

Here, with ears shut to Hades’ hectoring,
We hear, instead, a softer, meeker tune
The rhythm of love kneeling down to serve.

Here we retreat from this world’s battering
Here we can laugh in honest, open fun
Eyes meeting eyes that smile and understand.

Here, so at rest we need no fancy dress,
Hands reach for hands across the gulf of self
And clasp, content to simply wait a while.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

If words were arrows

this isn't about anything, not directly anyway. (indirectly it always is, I suppose, since it came from somewhere. Just a writing exercise, following a "poetry prompt" -- if words were ...

If words were arrows,
I would lodge them in your heart,
Seeking to pierce the layers of confusion
That make our tongues so brittle.

If words were water,
I would let them trickle over you
Bringing sweet refreshment,
Wearing holes in stone.

If words were fire,
I would burn away indifference;
Melt your icy coldness,
And fuse our understandings.

If words were seeds,
I would plant them in your arid places
And let their roots run deep,
To dislodge solid stone.

But my words are only vapours,
The helpless shapes of breath
Dispersing into nothingness
With the breeze of your small shrug.