The Crescendo

I rage, I toil, I cower and sweat.

I have not met my maker yet

and if I meet him I shall say,

‘Please come again another day.

I am not ready. I am not ripe.

The times not right!’ I’d wail and gripe.

I’d beg of him right there some sign

that he was fair; that fate aligned

and gave me all that I deserved

not less and from the path I swerved

by some dark power ill beset

to full crescendo of regret.

And in the whisper there I heard

the tempest break at silent words.

I knew, and he reminds me now,

that I deserved much worse allowed

for fate is held by piercèd hands

that save each one from fair demands.

From instant darkness, ash, and flame

and takes upon himself the blame

So God the Father please forgive

my angry heart; my will to live.

Teach me—slowly—how to die

that I might live for more than lies—

not what I see but for the hearts

That beat for thee—in distant parts—

a tune you love to hear and share:

The music of the lives you cared

enough to bring out from the dark.

And each that beats and stills you mark

as yours—this orchestra of strings.

So take my heart and make me sing:

Now in life and then in death,

may all I do; may every breath

be all for you my Elohim—

the Ever Greater Than He Seems.

Shadows Lit and Fled

The shadows lit and fled within the cave-

The hole of past iniquities piled high

And packed closer than stacked Parisian ’combs

Of bones on bones; mixed neighbours friends and foes

Till numbers disappear with all the names.

Yet when the crack of earthquake, pain and trial

Broke through the granite roof of strong facades

And split the cave in two down to the roots

The sunlight shone on bones in milling piles

Where darkness once held uncontested sway.

And in those dry and dusty bones within

That cold Platonic cave new life begins

To spark a fire in marrow stiff and old.

Life from death; a life renewed as phoenix

Wings and lasting beneath the phoenix star.

For now a valley is where once a cave

Held its crowded prisoners beneath dark,

Heavy earth and rock to dry out and wait

For what they did not know. These bones they have

Memories but no knowledge and hoping

Not much for futures, they forgot the hopes

In pasts. Before the end they grew as they

Now appear: cynical and hard and lone.

They saw only I’s and me’s and not we’s

But each a king, each a queen in their own

Reckoning, till parched and lost they became

All indistinguishable pale, dry bones.

The names and titles and wealth and everything

They once were and thought and fought over was

Forgotten; nameless heaps in an arid

Valley. There they should remain, forever,

A hidden mystery of death and woe.

Yet despite everything that lives and seems

And all that had ever lived a whisper,

A voice, a word arose beneath the sun

To light the still burning fire in these bones.