Here's a small sample:
*
I woke to the wilderness.
Some
sweepings here, caught up in corners,
Blown
around.
I
had to run after myself, trying to snatch
Something
here and there
Is
an opinion, newly formed and lightly held
And
there
Is
a memory I’ll polish clean.
I
carried a grab bag and sometimes I’d sit down
To
puzzle through it-
Why
this?
god-
him
I put in the back seat, solicitous. I said
Do
unto me what you must but you’re breaking my bones
And
you don’t want me anymore, anyway,
Without
my saccharine, Kool-Aid colored topping
my
black bound rule book.
Let’s
be honest.
You’re
not telling me to go left or right here,
At
the stop sign, where I’m
Constantly
yielding.
I
don’t know which way to go and
You’re
not helping.
Go
tend your lambs, I’ll handle the dogs.
I’m
used to it.
At
the very bottom of the bag I carried with me
Memories
like hope kept in the back of the box,
After
everything else had been let loose.
Sometimes
I turned back and saw Him there,
That
One I couldn’t speak or carve out
Perplexed,
I tried shooing Him away.
“Close
your eyes, You shouldn’t see this,” I told Him,
More
than once.
But
He just kept on following after, showing up
To
the terrible party, closing the doors after the guests had left
And
cleaning the place up with me,
Sleeping at my side, lying on the floor.
Sleeping at my side, lying on the floor.
I
said, I’ll never speak a word of this to anyone-
This
grace is too cheap to be believed-
Ridiculous.
Where
His sense of cause and effect?
Why
won’t He
Hit
me?
Sometimes
I would peak out of the lattice of my heart
And
glimpse Him, as I had known Him
I knew I was His, through and through
But
I wasn’t living it righteously enough
To
prove it was true.
So
I made a door, to keep Him safe from myself
And
sometimes I would open the door and check on Him.
“I
love You,” I would say. “I’m Your girl,
Your bruised and battered girl.
Your bruised and battered girl.
And
You know the fire of pain that burns at the hinges of my heart.
There’s
no need for us to speak.
But
I can’t come to You just yet.
I
can’t take it.
But
You know where I am.”
And
He would wait!
I
would close the door on Him, and He would wait!
What
manner of God is this?
Whose
image is He making manifest?
This
is an untaught God, older than humanity,
Living,
not written.
His
freedom is dizzying
and born of love and held of love and taught of love
and born of love and held of love and taught of love
He
knows nothing and can do nothing
but what His loving father showed Him.
but what His loving father showed Him.
What
Father?
This Father the created universe cannot possibly contain.
This Father the created universe cannot possibly contain.
Where
is there room for this love that died
To
lie down with us in our personal hell
Before
they ever spoke us into being?
This God-
He was always unmistakable to me by the scars He carries.
They mirrored my own.
This God-
He was always unmistakable to me by the scars He carries.
They mirrored my own.
