The Slow Descent of Years

The Slow Descent of Years

(“During those days He went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.” Luke 6:12)

I have cried, I know You have seen it;
as autumn brings the slow descent of years.
Please (it is my ego’s petition) let me reach the end
with more than a sparsely sown field. My muscles
no longer ache,
I am in too much pain to use them.
But my soul has never hurt so deep while I wait
for just one more year of abundance. Battered
sometimes by words and reversed rhymes that
I never did see coming,
my hideaway is barely 12x12
and my prayers a shorter measure.

I have never loved You more, and yet,
in this final turn, though cheered on by many,
the blows I’ve taken over the years have left a deadly
scar I protect by letting the phone keep on ringing,
moving my mouth while others do the singing,
and resigning myself to my final fate; I wanted to
end better than this.

So, will You go to the mountain for me?
And, if I perhaps found the strength to hike halfway,
would You still meet me there? Would you show me
how to finish well, fill my swelling soul with so much more
than the mourning over memories?

So will You stay by the fountain with me;
though, like the Samaritan woman, I do not find my way there
till well into the afternoon?
And yet, I need you sooner. Certain of fewer doctrines,
and certain of no other options than the grace You
wooed me with, and the grace that will

Lead me home.