Reflections on Luke: 1:5-7

For Lent this year I will pick up the project I began late last year (and only got as far as the first one) of writing reflective, responsive poems working systematically through Luke's gospel

1:5-7

These are the barrens.

Here the crow caws wide

Across interminable loss;

The heart hangs low

With longing unfulfilled.

Here raindrops dance

Only to stir the dust.

The priest, his wife,

The sorrow and the struggle,

Falling short

Of their own normal;

Leaking out long pain

In slow deflation;

Striving after joy

In little things, to heal the gaping wound.

Does great God hear the prayers of unslaked dust?

Does he bend down to those whose failure haunts

The margins of their ordinary lives?

Does mercy fall to shatter quiet despair?