Sixth and Trinity were the cross streets in the "bar section" of town where I used to stand with my husband as he handed out tracts and shared the gospel. My primary job was to pray, and this poem is an approximation of the prayers I used to say, and the moment that happened again and again--it used to fascinate me--when they looked at the tract and it's bold print "Righteous for the Unrighteous," and then passed on.
Oh Lord, save her.
Here she comes,
the girl in the black halter,
rose tattoo, and eyes
of empty determination,
just like the others. Save her.
I don't know her, I can only guess
at history and heart breaks,
what sins, fears, friends,
justifications she carries in her walk,
or who she goes to,
but her life has been mapped out
in Your mind since before Time,
and I pray that You would
save her from all her sins.
By Your grace.
Your mighty grace,
strong like a battlement against Satan's
temptations, and all our sins.
We build our towers against You,
but You devastate them
with love, when You choose.
Oh, she's walking past now—she sees
the fluttering paper—
It's life! It's life! For free, take it!--
averts those
eyes You know, tosses
the blond hair, grips her
black vinyl purse a little harder.
Her heart! Her heart!
It must be changed!
Change it! Change it, Lord!
Even like Christ
changed the water to the wine,
and You changed Israel's heart from
stone to flesh.
For mercy's sake, and all that blood;
Did not He shed enough
for her as well?
One more! One more, good Lord,
to magnify
the forgiveness of the cross,
and the power of the sacrifice.
One more to speak Your praises,
one more to bring You glory by her salvation,
and Christ by her redemption.
How many did He buy?
The number of the elect out number the sand.
Oh, may she be one!
Forgive her Lord, forgive her. Forgive her sins,
as we all have been forgiven.
Give her mercy, Lord, as we all
have received mercy, not by our hand,
but by Yours, and Your Son's.
There, she's gone again,
the crowd has swallowed her up,
and she walked away
from salvation tonight, but You will
always know where she is.
Oh Lord, save her.
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Midnight Comfort
My weeping child
I gather in my arms,
press his warm damp cheek with mine,
whisper to him of angels
that spread their breathless wings
over the shadows cast
by the green nightlight.
In the other bed, his twin
stirs, turns his sweet,
closed-lidded face up.
I soothe, shush,
stroke the beloved tousled head,
tuck the small curled body in,
and leave behind
my prayers to the God who watches
even while I sleep.
I gather in my arms,
press his warm damp cheek with mine,
whisper to him of angels
that spread their breathless wings
over the shadows cast
by the green nightlight.
In the other bed, his twin
stirs, turns his sweet,
closed-lidded face up.
I soothe, shush,
stroke the beloved tousled head,
tuck the small curled body in,
and leave behind
my prayers to the God who watches
even while I sleep.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Mantra Against Violence [on tv]
November 30, 1998
How many gun shots?
How many blood wounds?
How often across my mind the synthetic red
has shattered in grotesque imagery
of real people’s pain? The death
and suffering and sin that has torn a once
innocent world to gory shreds
must repeat itself, as if we had not
real blood in rivers through our streets.
The screams of a thousand mothers
will echo in my ears if I but look around;
why seek more?
Surely soon blood will be a film upon my eyes
as terror stalks my thoughts
to slay them for death’s cult following.
I do not wish to share my skull with corruption,
putrescence, hate and violence,
but how shall I wash these guts away?
Soon, how shall I grieve
for the world I seek in fascination?
How many gun shots?
How many blood wounds?
How often across my mind the synthetic red
has shattered in grotesque imagery
of real people’s pain? The death
and suffering and sin that has torn a once
innocent world to gory shreds
must repeat itself, as if we had not
real blood in rivers through our streets.
The screams of a thousand mothers
will echo in my ears if I but look around;
why seek more?
Surely soon blood will be a film upon my eyes
as terror stalks my thoughts
to slay them for death’s cult following.
I do not wish to share my skull with corruption,
putrescence, hate and violence,
but how shall I wash these guts away?
Soon, how shall I grieve
for the world I seek in fascination?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
These Days
I wrote this one when I was about sixteen. If I felt that way then, imagine how I feel now!
Time is slipping!
Like
sand,
silvered sand,
though
our fingers.
And though
we try to
grasp it,
it keeps on
slipping
down
in a
silken ribbon
of
moments gone
fading
rushing by like the wind as it blows.
These days
that are
so precious?
We cannot
keep them
but can only
gaze
in delight
while
we have them
and then
we can remember.
Time is slipping!
Like
sand,
silvered sand,
though
our fingers.
And though
we try to
grasp it,
it keeps on
slipping
down
in a
silken ribbon
of
moments gone
fading
rushing by like the wind as it blows.
These days
that are
so precious?
We cannot
keep them
but can only
gaze
in delight
while
we have them
and then
we can remember.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Letter to an Unseen Love
A couple of weeks ago my husband and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary. In honor of that, I thought I would post this poem, written in the year before our marriage, when he was just another aquaintance. It is a poem about why I stayed single, why I waited and hoped and prayed for a man that God would clearly show to me, rather than compromising and just "dating around." I put all of my girlish longings into it, never knowing that my husband was, in fact, literally "next year."
You are the strut in my step.
You are my fingers in my hair.
You are the secret smile through talk of romance,
and the waiting out of quiet frenzies.
You kiss me in the car, in the kitchen, and in my bed.
You are the dream of my silence,
the taste of my desire.
It is you who compel my beauty,
my hope of being woman.
I have always dressed for you, painted my lips
and bejeweled my ankles for you: there is no other.
When laughing at eyes, I am thinking of you.
You are girlish plans, adolescent sighs,
and a woman’s longing.
You have ever been real to me.
However unseen your face,
your presence shadows my eyes,
and though I never see you,
I will always remember.
You, my love, seal my purity,
and our coming promise binds me now.
If not, then the dream of you binds me.
You are half my dances,
and all my love songs sung so throatily in the shower.
You are more than I could have guessed.
If I am always looking over my shoulder for you,
it is because I see your silhouette before me,
and feel your breath.
I have never had a lover, only a husband,
and if you are not, then I am no less married.
You are the strut, and the preen, and the smile.
You are Christ, you are prayers,
you are long anticipated,
but here made real by hope.
You are now, not only next year.
You are the strut in my step.
You are my fingers in my hair.
You are the secret smile through talk of romance,
and the waiting out of quiet frenzies.
You kiss me in the car, in the kitchen, and in my bed.
You are the dream of my silence,
the taste of my desire.
It is you who compel my beauty,
my hope of being woman.
I have always dressed for you, painted my lips
and bejeweled my ankles for you: there is no other.
When laughing at eyes, I am thinking of you.
You are girlish plans, adolescent sighs,
and a woman’s longing.
You have ever been real to me.
However unseen your face,
your presence shadows my eyes,
and though I never see you,
I will always remember.
You, my love, seal my purity,
and our coming promise binds me now.
If not, then the dream of you binds me.
You are half my dances,
and all my love songs sung so throatily in the shower.
You are more than I could have guessed.
If I am always looking over my shoulder for you,
it is because I see your silhouette before me,
and feel your breath.
I have never had a lover, only a husband,
and if you are not, then I am no less married.
You are the strut, and the preen, and the smile.
You are Christ, you are prayers,
you are long anticipated,
but here made real by hope.
You are now, not only next year.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Lines Written in a Laundromat
I had a request for this, from my good friend Lissa, who once gave me a quarter in a laundromat and commissioned me to write a poem for her.
These are empty crossroads
where people come
not to live or stay
and no shattered fears or transformed dreams
have broken on the glass
or whirled around in the rhythmic electric cycle
of clothing rebirth.
There is nothing alive about this place.
The wooden and cinder block cyril blue walls
and tawdry tables
and uniform lines of steel machines dully shining
flipping the colored cloth on its head
synchronized with furious little fans
are dead, and a cry
to the unaesthetic heart of those who think in practical ways
in this country—And yet
humanity has trickled through
or welled, like a side-eddy
(The little rich and smally housed
and really alive).
I wonder at the tales
and wish I could have known the faces
the lives so full, that came, and left this place empty.
In the silence their silence is heard—
their faces were as blank as those dryers
as uniform, perhaps.
We wash our clothes
our hearts we take away unchanged.
In this,
humanity’s berth,
well worn,
we sit as strangers
passing through
as others have,
one or two in the trickle that washed the cyril blue
walls with remembered moments
not worth counting but
remembering
and recalling like the tumble of
brilliant faded clashing
garments that bring beauty
going round
and round
because they must.
And then we go.
1998/99
These are empty crossroads
where people come
not to live or stay
and no shattered fears or transformed dreams
have broken on the glass
or whirled around in the rhythmic electric cycle
of clothing rebirth.
There is nothing alive about this place.
The wooden and cinder block cyril blue walls
and tawdry tables
and uniform lines of steel machines dully shining
flipping the colored cloth on its head
synchronized with furious little fans
are dead, and a cry
to the unaesthetic heart of those who think in practical ways
in this country—And yet
humanity has trickled through
or welled, like a side-eddy
(The little rich and smally housed
and really alive).
I wonder at the tales
and wish I could have known the faces
the lives so full, that came, and left this place empty.
In the silence their silence is heard—
their faces were as blank as those dryers
as uniform, perhaps.
We wash our clothes
our hearts we take away unchanged.
In this,
humanity’s berth,
well worn,
we sit as strangers
passing through
as others have,
one or two in the trickle that washed the cyril blue
walls with remembered moments
not worth counting but
remembering
and recalling like the tumble of
brilliant faded clashing
garments that bring beauty
going round
and round
because they must.
And then we go.
1998/99
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
My Son's Feet
Warning! If you are one of those people who is easily grossed out by other people's feet, don't read this! All you who know me will probably laugh pretty hard at this. The son in question, incidentally, is J.
My son has sweaty feet,
even as I had sweaty feet,
tough, dirty, thickly calloused feet, and slightly cracked
around the heels,
dark from
kicking through dust, stepping gingerly
over sun-hot concrete
(stopping sometimes to pick out burs or broken glass bits),
and then running happy in the muddy grass,
or climbing rocks my toes could grip
while others fumbled in their boots.
—And then my shoes!
My shoes!
Those childhood shoes, flimsy and stretched,
black, grimy inside, and smelling the way
I’m sure my feet would smell,
if I never washed them.
No wonder I tried not to wear them, and left them behind
so often that
my mother stopped buying me anything but flip-flops—
they made my feet sweat, and
(more importantly) confined them—
My bare, clever-toed, sweaty feet,
with the dirt of three continents ingrained in them.
Even now I cherish
my callused soles, refuse the
loofahs and files and polishing stones and lotions,
preferring their roughness and happy memories.
And now my son has sweaty feet.
Little, square, soft but strong feet,
with always dirty toenails,
that his socks stick to like Velcro.
“Now, push with your foot,” I tell him, as I try to wrestle them on
one half-inch at a time.
“Mommy, I don’t want to wear them,” he tells me, and I smile.
“I understand,” I say. “Why don’t you wear your sandals
today? Or go barefoot.”
“I want to go barefoot.”
“That’s good.” That’s good, my son.
Go enjoy the sun-warmed pavement, sharp grass and
soft dirt between your toes. Step on rocks and glass and burs, wince
and then run on. Feel
God’s earth beneath you, touch it, be connected
with it, grip it with your toes and
dance on it, enjoy its dirt and
life
before civility houses your feet with
shoes that are required, and
cut you off.
And then he runs outside,
and I too, following him over
hot rocks and prickly weeds with
tough and blackened joyful feet.
My son has sweaty feet,
even as I had sweaty feet,
tough, dirty, thickly calloused feet, and slightly cracked
around the heels,
dark from
kicking through dust, stepping gingerly
over sun-hot concrete
(stopping sometimes to pick out burs or broken glass bits),
and then running happy in the muddy grass,
or climbing rocks my toes could grip
while others fumbled in their boots.
—And then my shoes!
My shoes!
Those childhood shoes, flimsy and stretched,
black, grimy inside, and smelling the way
I’m sure my feet would smell,
if I never washed them.
No wonder I tried not to wear them, and left them behind
so often that
my mother stopped buying me anything but flip-flops—
they made my feet sweat, and
(more importantly) confined them—
My bare, clever-toed, sweaty feet,
with the dirt of three continents ingrained in them.
Even now I cherish
my callused soles, refuse the
loofahs and files and polishing stones and lotions,
preferring their roughness and happy memories.
And now my son has sweaty feet.
Little, square, soft but strong feet,
with always dirty toenails,
that his socks stick to like Velcro.
“Now, push with your foot,” I tell him, as I try to wrestle them on
one half-inch at a time.
“Mommy, I don’t want to wear them,” he tells me, and I smile.
“I understand,” I say. “Why don’t you wear your sandals
today? Or go barefoot.”
“I want to go barefoot.”
“That’s good.” That’s good, my son.
Go enjoy the sun-warmed pavement, sharp grass and
soft dirt between your toes. Step on rocks and glass and burs, wince
and then run on. Feel
God’s earth beneath you, touch it, be connected
with it, grip it with your toes and
dance on it, enjoy its dirt and
life
before civility houses your feet with
shoes that are required, and
cut you off.
And then he runs outside,
and I too, following him over
hot rocks and prickly weeds with
tough and blackened joyful feet.
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