Mary’s Devotion

The painting above is ‘Forgiveness’ by Daniel Gerhartz. The following post is inspired by an account of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet, found in John 12. This took place shortly before Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Here You are, Lord. 

I see you sitting across the table, long dark hair and brown eyes as familiar to me as my brother’s. We grew up together like cousins, running together as children. There was something different about you, something gentle and peaceful. You were kinder than the other boys. It seemed you had a good influence on them too. Lazarus would grow peaceful as he spent time with you. He grew stronger, more whole. It’s because of You he has grown into the man we know.

Lazarus, my brother: the one we lost but You gave him back to us. Four days in the grave and he walked out. 

Not long ago, I fell at your feet on the dust. “Had you been here,” I cried to you. “He would not have died.” Hadn’t You travelled all through the land healing the sick? Did we mean so little to you that You could not travel here, to Bethany, to this familiar place and those who have been like family to you, to save us from death? 

When You saw my tears, You cried too. The tears of the Messiah ran down dusty human skin. Your eyes and Your mouth were contorted, twisted with pain. My anger left me. 

Here You are, Lord. 

You sit before us at our table again. You have brought your band of followers, rowdy and unkept, spread around the room on stools and the floor. Sometimes I wonder why you’ve chosen men like these in all of their tempers and humanity. Yet I see them, slowly, become more like You. 

I watch you talking with them. The lines on your face have grown deeper. There is sorrow somewhere deep within you. I can feel it with a sense beyond comprehension. 

My heart has been tied to You since the beginning. It is not in the way a wife is devoted to her husband, or a child is devoted to her father, but something much deeper. It is how someone can only be tied to the One who made her, who breathed life into her lungs.

Yahweh, I’ve known You. 

You have always been the one who sees me and knows me. There is no one who knows me better, not even Lazarus, not even Martha. There have been times when they’ve misunderstood me. They’ve mistaken my devotion for laziness. They’ve seen my affection as inappropriate. There are customs I’m supposed to follow, for the sake of propriety and modesty. But my attachment to You has always been stronger than any will I have to follow the rules of this time and this place. You are outside Bethany, outside Israel, beyond the sky, Lord. You are bigger than everything we can see.

Every chance I got, I sat at Your feet and listened. I cannot read like my brother, but I can hear. I memorised it all and put it together in my heart. I understand what is going to happen now. My Lord, the pain is almost too much to bear. 

Here you are, Lord. This is the last time I will see you before you are killed. 

My tears mingled with oil as I prepared the body of my brother for burial, the strong scent of nard didn’t leave our home for days, thick, heavy, pungent. I can still smell it when I come in from a day outdoors. Martha worked alongside me. I confess, Lord, we spoke of You with some confusion and pain. But Martha, who has changed so much since she opened her heart to You, said, “Whatever He asks of the Lord will be given to Him.” 

I fought against the hope that tried to erupt in my broken heart. As I gazed upon my brother’s lifeless face, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “You think Jesus will raise Lazarus from the dead?” 

She didn’t answer. 

The day You arrived, she had been waiting for You. She ran out to meet You. I don’t know what You spoke of together before she came to find me but her grief had left her. I think you told her Lazarus would rise. Together, we watched the impossible happen. 

Here You are, Lord. 

The room is noisy with cheerful sounds and bright with flickering candlelight. Lazarus sits near You. He has been full of laughter since he rose. Just weeks ago, his body was frail and almost lost to us. Now, wine glows pink on his cheeks. His eyes have a light that is from another world. Now, his belly shakes as he laughs at something Peter has said.

Martha is preparing food and serving it to your band of hungry men. Her eyes meet mine across the room. Her heart is as heavy as mine. She can feel it too. 

I’m finding it difficult to join in with the laughter today. 

You can tell something is different about me. Your gaze is on me across the table. I look into your familiar eyes, soft and brown as freshly turned earth, and find an answer to my question. I find permission. 

As I slip into a darker corner of the room, only You and Martha are watching me. I find the jar of oil up high where we keep it safely tucked away. The memory of nervousness returns to me as I stand on my tip toes and slide the jar off the shelf. We could never go within a foot of this jar as children without Ima quickly saying, “Be careful near the alabaster. The oil inside costs a year’s wages. It comes from India, a very far away place.” More eyes are on me now. 

I carry the jar carefully to You. The peace of Your presence fills me as I get close to You, like warm milk. Oh Lord, what will we do without You? 

Laughter is fading. I hear only whispers. Tears start to fill my eyes as I imagine the room without You. Kneeling next to you, I let them pour down my cheeks. This is my favourite place in the world: by Your side and the last time I will kneel here.

“What’s she doing now?” one of the disciples mutters. 

I cannot meet your gaze, Lord. The look in Your eyes will be too painful for me. I will miss You too much. I can only stare at Your feet. These are the dirty, blistered, human feet of my Teacher, the Messiah, with all of the hair and cuts and cracks I’d expect from any man’s feet. And yet, these are the feet of the Lord, the one who has come to rescue us. 

Only through death can you rescue us. I know that now. 

Looking around me, I realise I have nothing to wipe your feet with, so I uncover my hair. Several gasps cut the silence. Someone says something to Lazarus, some command to get me under control. He doesn’t move. I don’t care about any of them. 

I look at the alabaster jar in my shaking hands. This is the most valuable thing we own. I want to pour it all out for you, everything I have. I let it fall to the hard floor and as it smashes into pieces. Martha and Lazarus look at each other. I feel something inside me break free. 

I take the burial oil and melt bits of it liberally with my hands. As my fingertips meet the skin of your feet, something ripples through the depths of me. Though I have always sat as close to you as I can, I have so rarely touched you. Gently, I rub the oil into the cracked, dirty, holy skin. You do not recoil, not even when I use my hair to wipe off the dirt, the stringy tendrils covering your skin. You watch me. I apply more. The scent of nard pricks the memory of grief. Silently, my tears are falling onto your feet. Salt water mixed with hair, mixed with oil. The more oil I use, the more agitated the disciples become. I’m afraid they might pull me to my feet, oily hair hanging down around me, and throw me outside into the night. But I know You wouldn’t let them. 

Now, I have finished rubbing the last of the oil into your feet, I look up into Your face for what I know will be one of the last times. I have known Your face for most of my life, yet I can see the agelessness of Yahweh deep in your eyes. I can see love there that no man or woman can fathom. 

Judas is the first to speak. All this time, he’s been doing the maths in his head. He stands up and speaks to the room, his words sharp with accusation: something about the cost of the oil and what the money could have been used for. It feels disjointed to me, like he must be blind to the atmosphere in the room, like he’s missing the reality of Jesus’ impending death. 

I only hear Your words, soft as You look into my eyes. “Leave her alone,” You say. You are smiling affectionately at me. “She has kept this for the day of my burial.” The understanding between us is deep, pulsing through my veins. I see a promise in Your eyes..

“The poor you will always have with you,” You say to Judas. To the rest of the disciples, You say, “You will not always have me.” 

The disciples look at each other, shifting uncomfortably on the floor and stools around the table. Judas sits down. You keep looking at me. All of us remain quietly in the room, the air thick with the fragrance of burial oil.

I know now that You must die for us, and You must rise again. In Your eternal gaze, I see the promise. I will not always have You here, yet I will always know You. 

My friend.  My Messiah. My Teacher. 

Yahweh.

John 12: 1-8

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

The Valley of Dry Bones

We bones lie silent in piles, powdering in the air. The lengths of femur and tibia lie tangled with curved ribs and weightless vertebrae. Skulls crown from the grey dirt. Two earthy crests rise to the sides to trap us in dusty hue and block out the sky. We are the Valley of Shadow. We are the Valley of Dry Bones.
We are the bones of past mortals. We carried them yelling into battle and felt the impact of sword and shield. Blood raced around us as we carried the weight of pulsing muscle, on horseback, in chariot, on foot. We fell under the mass of ourselves, suffocated by a collapsed lung, drowned by a burst heart. Our skin was peeled back by the stench of rot which curled and exposed the muscle beneath.

Dry and separated, we lie meaningless. The memory of death is beyond us, lost in the noise of final cries fading to the stillness of the last breath. The names they called us are gone. We had no burial. We are exposed to the air. And so the sun will rise for a hundred years to shine just beyond the reach of our shadow. We bones lie yellowing, forgotten, and time has no meaning for us. We long to feel connected and close, joined by tissues long lost to us now, bound in place and strong.

We hear whispers in the wind, something stirring in the stars, something ebbing in the earth. One thing changes in this valley: we bones wait. The memories return to us slowly, how the cry of a king pulled our hearts into battle, how mortality felt fragile and we were willing to break it. Death was something we felt we could give, then. Now we know that death is taken. From some it was pulled gradually, one organ at a time, and from some it was stolen in gasps.

‘This will not be our end,’ the king’s voice echoes still. He was the first to fall. Our buildings were brought down by hands which led us off in chains. Mother and daughter became strangers. The crops of our homeland were burned and the smoke rose to the sky and faded. Our bodies were thrown here to lie forever. On the horizon we could recognise our temple, a beacon to us, but it crumbled out of recognition. Where is Yahweh if he has no temple to live in? Where is Yahweh if his people’s bones lie cold and exposed to the sky?
We hear his voice as the earth rumbles beneath us. He is coming. There are footsteps and the rattle of us shifting and crunching under their weight.
Two men stand on the brow of a stack of bones, one old and cloaked, one made of white light. Even the air seems to wait for him. We ache as he stands there. We ache with the pain of how alone we felt. Has he finally come to bury his children? If we could, we would bow, but we can only lie at his feet. His gaze lights this valley and the prophet can see us. We bones stretch out in piles for miles.

We see in the prophet an age we did not reach. We remember the pull of tendons subtly dancing as we balanced on two feet like he does now. We remember the warm blanket of wet flesh which once covered us. Yahweh and the prophet begin walking along us dry bones. Slow are their steps. How we snap under their weight as they pass. The prophet’s eyes absorb us. How many mortals could be assembled from this ribbed landscape of death? When they are within sight of the end of us, the prophet breathes heavily. We remember how our ribs reached out over breaths like these.

‘Mortal,’ Yahweh’s voice shakes us and the earth. ‘Can these bones live?’

The air’s vibration as his voice echoes through us causes an avalanche of tarsals and carpals to rain down the side of the valley. Further and further we bones roll from the skeletons we belong to. How small we are in parts. The prophet lowers himself to us and blows. A cloud of dust is lifted from our dry surface. We are the forgotten many, hidden by our own dust. ‘O Lord God,’ his skin moves over his young skull to deepen the crease at his brow. ‘You know.’

‘Speak to these bones,’ he says to the prophet. ‘Say to them: O, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ There seems to be breath in the wind. The potential of life fills the air like a storm’s tension strikes the sky.

‘Thus says the LORD God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.’ The air stirs us, so strong it catches the prophet’s low voice and pulls it down. We move, disturbed by the wind like pebbles on a riverbed. ‘I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.’

For the first time in centuries, the noise we make breaks the soundlessness. The prophet cowers. We bones are flung to life and roar like thunder. The valley pulses as skull meets vertebrae, clavicle, sternum, pelvis, bone to its bone. Patella, tibia, fibula align in the order they knew before to make legs. Like arrows we fly across the valley to find our parts. No bone has been lost.

A snap, like a whip crack, rebounds across us as tissue clasps onto us bones. O, the warmth of it holding us tightly. The sinew binds us together. Again and again the snap sounds out as each skeleton is bound in place. We resemble mortals now. Eternal bone is covered by this transitory flesh.

Our eyes swell in the cavities of our skulls. Brains flash wildly in that shadow. In each mouth is the winding tongue. Teeth pierce through gums. The first heart I saw looked like an attack writhing in the depths of a man. Organs are piled into each body and now the veins are thrown out of the heart. They plunge into the depths of organs and out again carrying hot blood which falls in thick drops denting the dust beneath us.

How the heart must clench and release. How much force it pushes each time it beats.

Mine shakes my frame and I feel as if I might fall apart again, a hot pile of bones and tissue.

The dust is moving. Bulges swell like bubbles with a glimmer of slime. These grow- no, they move. They move upwards to the surface. I see now, these lumps are made of flesh. They crawl towards us. Pressing into my bones the tissue moulds itself to me and veins implant in it like rivers sticking out. Muscle. When we were alive, we took these most for granted. How usual it was to rise and go. Yet we see now how intricately these muscles are attached to the sinew at points so that we may pivot and move. I flex my foot. As my toes curl and the sole arches I see it clenching and relaxing.

Now, the valley is crowded with skinless humans. Alarming are the faces of the men and women lying by me. Our eyes bulge from almost-faces. Our bodies flutter with the movement skin hid.

It starts to grow on us in a way reverse to how it melted from us. Skin leaks from our muscles and flows like a thin layer of lava across our surface, from the hands to the bicep, meeting on the forearm and melding seamlessly, covering every part of us. I turn my head in the dust. The smooth faces of my neighbours are built with noses, and eyelids and lips.

Hairs and nerves pluck my skin a million times. I feel the gaping hole in my abdomen and remember hunger and how it crawls up my chest. I feel cold bite my skin. Goosebumps rise and the dust feels dry. I feel the wind which revived us rub each hair and bend it back. My head and chin itch as hair grows, its ends spreading out around me. Newly adorned with eyebrows, the faces of my neighbours are complete.

Yahweh stands tall. We can only lie at his feet. The prophet looks upon this valley of bodies. He turns his wide eyes from us newborns to the Lord and waits. The wind is moving through us, brushing over us, lifting our hairs. Yahweh watches us. ‘Prophesy to the breath,’ he whispers. ‘Prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath.’ Ezekiel shakes. ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’

Ezekiel raises his shaking arms and his lips move to repeat these words. Wind takes his voice before we hear it. I feel my lungs flinch with the need for air. My throat is opened. The dust catches. Gasping for more, I rise to my knees. My abdomen buckles with the effort of coughing. The valley writhes with thousands of others choking. I stand upright, dizzy with the height, and unsteady on my legs. I hold out my arms to balance myself. The hot eyes of Yahweh bear into mine. Strength shoots into my muscles. I see the valley waking to life. To my right, to my left, behind me, thousands of bodies are rising, clutching their chests, and then letting go. They hold their arms out to Yahweh.

Our voices rise. “We were dead,” we murmur. “We were dead!” We scream to one another. “We laid here for a hundred years.” Neighbours turn to each other. “We were dry bones.” My eyes are locked on His. “I was dead,” I shout. “I was dead!” My heart is starting to throb and I can feel each gush of blood as it’s pushed through my body’s tunnels. The Lord’s eyes are shining. We people sing. Hands are clapped against each other, against thighs and chests as we people celebrate and the valley rises with music.

‘Mortal,’ Yahweh turns to the staring prophet. ‘These bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely”.’ We were buried in our dust. We dry bones were silent in this valley as the wind howled through it. ‘Say to them, “I, the Lord, will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.’”

There is weeping in the valley. It isn’t mournful as the weeping of our death. Tears of new life flow now, bubbling from the depths of us. We have seen him. He is with us. ‘I will set you on your own soil.’ I remember the fading smoke of our city. I remember us people fleeing through burning crop fields. I remember the temple losing its place on our horizon. ‘You shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.’ The whole valley shifts with Yahweh’s words so that clouds of dust charge down the sides of the mountains.

For a hundred years, the valley lay silent. Moments ago we were the forgotten bones of a tortured people. The light could not touch us. How could hope enter that valley of dust? Yet how many bodies have been raised from that landscape of hopelessness? We heard him coming. It is Yahweh who remembered and saved us. It is Yahweh whose voice has raised us from the dust. It is through Yahweh we have life.

 

I stand in the shade of a building. The people around me squint or shade their eyes to look at this prophet, who explains his strange vision to us. Their faces are creased, their mouths pulled down at the corners. Men shift their weight between blistered feet on the hot sand. Women in black are clustered on doorsteps. Several feet from me, a man crouches, weeping.
Voices near me are murmuring:
‘This man thinks he can raise people from the dead.’
‘He has plenty of opportunity to practice. We aren’t lasting the year.’
I feel sweat roll down my back. ‘That isn’t what he means.’
They step closer to me. ‘He stands there and says it. The Lord told him to wake the bones, he woke them. Isn’t he a prophet? Don’t prophets tell the future?’
The other adds, ‘Ezekiel isn’t a prophet, he’s mad.’
‘You’d do well to shield your ears from this, young man,’ I’m told.
He puts his hand on my back to guide me away.

I can’t shake that image of the valley. When Ezekiel told it, I felt I was there. I heard the bones rattle. I saw the fear in his eyes as our people rose to life. As I pass through the crowd, Ezekiel’s eyes meet mine, just like Yahweh’s had when I heard the vision. Didn’t those men see what it meant? Yahweh has given us a vision of death bursting to life. He is showing us He’s with us. He has spoken. He will act.

Here Firesiding

I hold my hands open for the fire
and let its light face my palms
like a stare, transparent heat flicking and
flaming. Why are you here?

Its soundless questions grow close,
shrink far in an instant, consuming,
it wraps itself around its reach
burning. Who are you?

The song from our cooler darkness
rises and falls with our confidence.
A harmony dances in the smoke
picking guitar strings. What-

is it? The trees start to breathe
beneath far away stars and
I’m standing on embers which
glow in the dark and it’s

rising and falling inside me.
My heartbeat, the part of me deep
sometimes writhing or peaceful
or fighting or hiding or

here firesiding. I see the eternal glow
in eyes connected to Heaven.
I almost fall in the immensity
of existence. This fireside-

Endless, endless sky,
timeless light drifting through space
and my eye is too small to approach
light so bright. I hold my gaze

open to the fire and let
what’s inside face it. It echoes,
Where have you been, child
of light? Growing closer and closer

Consumes me.

Leaving St. Andrews

Salty sea, the feeling of numb arms and legs

 excited lungs, It washes in and out all the time.

I see it through the breathing trees. 

I’m thinking about this town and its heartbeat, 

This kingdom, its golden fields and battered cliffs.

How many stones have I stepped on?

Thoughtfully looking as rain fell 

Into rippling streets. 

How many sunsets lured me from market street 

To the bough over West Sands 

with the wind and the seagulls. 
I wandered through strange trees 

And found myself in many woods, 

Branches hanging low over a growing brook 

As my feet dangled, I waited for something to find me

And know me by that place. 

I sprinted across vast spaces 

And hid amongst the trees. 

I whisper into the mist, ‘I made the most of you.’ And I disappear 

Because this town follows the hand of a clock, 

Changing lives as the Cathedral waits 

For the new faces to fill the old rooms 

The same desks, doors, floors, 

New elbows, hands, feet.

Fresh faces will flood the same streets 

We ‘experienced ones’ depart from. 
I pause today 

And think about time

How every minute the old me 

Becomes a little more like a stranger. 
We will be swept in the flurry of the present 

But I don’t want to race from this kingdom and forget 

Its nightless summers, bitter winters, long walks, secret streets, 

The way the trees bow over the water 

And everything makes way for that winding river

Which breathes with the sea 

And floods in the rain 

Which can last weeks. 

The har makes the steps before you 

Lost. 

The sky so huge it’s almost beneath you. 

I lay on the sand with my arms widespread 

And watched the clouds spin beneath me, 

And the waves crash above me. 

I waited on the surface,

Tumbled and battered by white horses. 

I spent countless moments 

Watching horizons and waiting for answers. 
I catch my breath as time moves on. 

This place is already a memory, 

And I will step into the place my hopes reside, 

Knowing that I tasted sea air,

And heard its softest call. 

Wonderer

The air between us is breathed in the same way,
Out and in. But the world,
So different. Like two sides of a sea.
One has life,
The other is barren.
And you imagine life to be imagined,
A figment.
While I see heavens.

The questions you ask,
I sometimes see as attack
But the truth is there is wonder in your eyes
When you contemplate God
And you don’t know him yet
Or his ways
Or his love.

Some do attack
But some do wonder.
And it is the wonderers who belong
To the place where wonder
Never ceases.

See the LORD works in ways counter cultural
To the way we identify our needs
In the world.
He doesn’t take us at our nature,
But at our potential.
He asks that we give everything
Every fibre of our wishes and
Self-identity,
To be remade, transformed
Healed, restored, made-whole,
To become a new being
Breathing light,
Finding hope,
Seeing Heavens.

You point your finger,
Curious wonderer,
At me and you say
‘How can you call that love?’
When you seek more than anything
A love that lasts
And doesn’t fade,
And you hope that my answer
Will convince you
So that you can believe
And discover the something different
In me and the light in my eyes.

And I tell you, the reason for that,
Is the countless times
I have given what I wanted
To Him
And got better instead.

See beyond.
Just try to imagine
There is more than what you see
And touch
And hear.

Beautiful wonderer. If you were trained to see,
As I am,
You would not miss
The powerful pursuit.
You are being hunted
By the almighty
And his desire for you
Is fulfilment.

And his plan is much bigger than that.
He longs for his children
To find their true identity
In him
And build a kingdom
Which is worthy
Of being his bride.
An equal.
A beauty.
A partner.
To restore the Earth.

Beautiful wonderer,
There are tears in my eyes
When I think about you
When I’m on my own.
And how you are not yet safe
In his arms.
And my prayers
Are a plea
That he’ll rescue you
From the lie you are in the midst of.
That there is no true love
And that something must be out there
But it can’t be my God.
That death is the end.
So we should all live life
As happily as we can
As ourselves
And change for no one.
Can’t you see
That is the reason
For so much pain
In the world?

I can tell you this
If every single person
In the world
Followed God,
With all that they have,
The true God I know,
People would be loved
No one would be lonely
Sickness would be overruled,
Everyone would share their harvest,
No one be misunderstood
Every marriage life-long, faithful,
Every death a ‘See you soon’.
Every job fulfilling,
Every friend uplifting,
Every sleep peaceful
Every day hopeful
Every dream important.

Wonderer,
Do not stop wondering
At the hand in the midst of the world.
And look with more than your eyes
And you will see.

Breaths

Mist

I snatch a word from the air like a whisper
Slow. It festers and rubs like a blister
Though. And the word is ‘mist’ and it settles
On, The golden hue of the forgotten
Dawn.

The sleep train rattles like a snake in
Night. The people dread being awake in
Light. They hide their head behind opaque win-
Dows. And on and on the sleepy sleep train
Goes.

And all along their rusty track we
Dance. Light fire pits like an attack, one
Chance, Is all we need, one sleepy eye to
See, We’ll twist our forms to show a way that’s
Free.

Our eyes so focussed on the sparks and
Wood, We build our bodies so the parts are
Good. We so distracted, when the deep mist
Fell, they could not see us and we could not
Tell.

So through the fog the sleepy sleep train
Goes. Nobody sees and so nobody
Knows. Within the mist the fire dance goes
On, A terror bursts from what they see be-
Yond.

I snatch a cry from the train like a dying
Scream. The people wake from their dark sleep
Dream. The mist is shattered by the clari-
Ty. And no one living can rise from their
Knees.

An eye beams through the dawn that broke it
Down. The train has crashed and now the people
Drown. The dancers stopped, they’re crying through their
Shame. They beg forgiveness and they cry His
Name.

I snatch this word from the air like a whisper,
From the air like a cry, and I can’t forget that fire
Eye, and how the people die.
The word is ‘mist’, it must not settle on,
The golden truth of our forgotten Dawn.

Restless

Turning with the wind I asked it where am I going?
Looking to the sun, I asked it who will I be?
My fingers tracing stone walls
And puddles shining patterns
Of ruins back at me
I ask them what do I see?

All these days pacing and wandering and wondering
Who will I be when I wake from a dream?
All this time tracing ideas and then pondering,
What Heaven sounds like and how does it seem?

I look to the horizon
With endlessness my eyes on
A fixed point between atmosphere and sea,
It seems so distant to me.

Glimpse

I caught a glimpse of who I am.
The space between trees in the snap of bark.
But was it me at all?
I snatched it with my dreams,
And stretched it around me like a cloak.
The glittering on the water,
Birds taking flight together.
If I’d been slow, I wouldn’t have missed it.
It was in every breath as I was still.
The clouds opened above me,
Just for me, because I was the only one paying attention.
I caught a glimpse of who I am
As a stranger passed and I smiled.
When I was alone,
I took off,
Into the trees like a native.
Nobody knew I was a stranger.

Alone, I am at my least lonely.
That isn’t a plea for people who get me.
I am got by plenty.
Alone,
I am free.
For then I am with my creator without distraction.
It’s in looking up,
To notice how the sky peeks through leaves.
The world takes flight.
Like a collection of wings
Bright white like clouds
Joining the sky.

I caught a glimpse of who I am,
In the quiet breath nobody heard but him.
In the staring competition with a squirrel.
In the stillness of comforting a robin.
I have wide eyes that wait for dawn.
And he is the sun
I follow him through the day
Dancing on waters and faces.
A stranger passed and I smiled,
And in that moment,
They felt sunrays.
I am only a glimpse
The snap of the bark
Running through the trees.

Running River Water

It’s warmer near him,
In the cold autumn night.
I’m trying to fight,
With the will within me,
That wants to reach out,
Wrapped up in him.
Shelter.

I get distracted by wind
In the leaves.
And the stars,
And the streetlamps
And moon.
My attention attracted
By running river water
River water running
In the night.

But in my search to
Find that loud sound,
What I found
Were his eyes.
Shining gold in the
Cold.
Mine were ice.

He is tall,
He is kind,
He is warm,
But not mine.

I cross over the road,
Next to him
And my thoughts in the dim
As he asks what they are.
Oh sweet undefined
Figure
Of love in my life.
We have crossed,
Don’t have far,
And I wait every hour
To call ‘home’
What I want as my own
And that’s him.

I’ll be quiet
And patient,
Preoccupied by
Capturing
the universe
While God uses his power
To ready our hearts,
For the battle he made us both for.