Interrupted Elegy

Bald the hill, and bare and raw the hearts and eyes that watched and wept. Empty now, and tramped and trod the dirt dishonored by our feet. A crying sky, and streams and screams and murmured thunder of remorse. Barren now, the wooden stakes crossed in sorrow, stained with loss. — But he was good, […]

Resurrection

Darkness falls, The cloak of evil claiming all the world. The One to save us from our sins, Our highest hope’s become our deepest loss. We put our one Light out upon a cross, And all is darkness now. ___ Cold and dark The death-cave where we lay our only Light, Nothing but a shadow […]

Sonnet IV

Recall the echoes through the crypts of time, The constant beat of strength and kindness there, The words of beauty to a world of grime, The music too majestic to compare: His treasured thoughts, unchanged in every age, The breaths of God concealed within a Book. He chose to write His heart on every page— […]

God Paints

God paints the world with colored strokes, with emerald and vermilion; with asteroid bursts and nebulae; with textured tapestries of plants, with vine-twined veins of chlorophyll; the thump and throb of pumping life. – God paints the world with colored strokes with onyx stones and coal dust; with dusky shade from cypress trees; with layered […]

Sonnet III

His love is never broken with His law. The sin of man would carve the rift that tears Away the earth from her Creator and draw The ugly marks that curse all our affairs: The poison, Self, polluting love; the gift Of children intertwined with pain; the rust Of tools discouraging our work; the swift […]

Sonnet II

In glory far beyond all earthly thought, He sat enthroned in timeless majesty- The Father, Son, and Spirit—one—with naught To mar the perfect Love’s infinity. Was Heaven’s beauty not enough a home? Or flawless love, an empty well to Him? Did some privation drive His heart to roam? Must love, though true, still fade a […]

Arm me for Battle

– Arm me for battle, Lord, that I may fight the battles facing soldiers blessed with ease: the callousness within my soul toward light that hardens all the ground sins’ battles seize; a mind recalcitrant and sharp with doubt that you would ever answer my complaint; the stab of fear that all I’ve learned about […]

Song of the Bereaved

The night is done— Our time When the sun rises on the sea And the smell of brine Draws you and me Out on the sand to run. Today we cannot run— Your night is done, And it is only me Here in our time, Watching the foaming brine As the sun rises on […]

Sunrise

The same wind blows the smell of burning ashes back to the dead, back to the stones. – Busy, crawling worker ants and constant spider, spinning out the web, Dreary, shadowed by the tomb— shadow of death. – An aging man sits praying in a coat, More slender than a stem of frozen ice with grief […]

The Party

Beating hearts shining eyes opened ceilinged car. – Speed! Jacked and ripped and wid’ning speed – And noise and friends and legs and hands and hair. – Need. Frantic pulsing pushing pulling need – Raw desire for jokes and s’mores and Red. Hot. Fire. – And wood. Burning, snapping, cracking wood. Then heat, – […]