When You Speak

When You Speak

(“To Him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” Revelation 1:5b, 6a)

I.

If you come up my walk on an afternoon,
winter when the shadows are low upon ground,
my dogs will greet you (or warn me) and will not stand down
until they have finished their security check and wagged you
in on hind legs hopping. Dogs are hopeless. Mine always
seems to be smiling the grin of a Husky ready to do the work
of a hundred men and do it again after a nap on the snow. Mine
always sounds angry when she barks at the sounds nature never
intended:
door knocks, car latches, rumbling engines and plates dropped
on the kitchen floor. When she sniffs a deer wandering between
the house and fruit trees the growl is guttural; deer and humans
alike
cannot hide the frightening image of ancient predator and prey.

But, give her sway, open the door, and she is ready to play,
though every auditory cue suggested dinner was upon the
canine menu.

II.

I have aged longer, a decade in five, as pain has depleted
the cistern of joy. Each day alive takes longer as the
knives in my head slash each thought from origin to
completion; from truth to unreasoned hallucinations.
I hear nothing but noise (though my best songs have
hibernated long enough to voice my first recollection.)
My best friend’s words (they are comfort, always and first)
are grit and dirt to ears sandpapered clear of resistance.

III.

Oh my God, and my Good. You have not change,
you have not moved.
You have loved and are the Healing Pool in which
I drift, I sleep and I wake. And yet

When You speak
I hear the pain cringe, I feel the clinch in
my shoulders, the drain of emotions
and my default is zero when once
Your words
were infinite joy to the hearer.

Speak to me though I startle, for,
Your words, mistranslated by my pain,
are the reason I still speak of my God,
my Good, then, now, and again.