As Scented Candles

 

As Scented Candles

(“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Romans 8:26)

Yes, today my mind is dull,
my heart is gray,
my eyes are glazed,
my skin is pinhole and
my mouth is locked shut for fear.

The next word could be the catalyst
for another stone lobbed in a ragged trajectory.
And when it lands only inches from my arteries
and I cry in pain,
the soldiers over the hill cry out,
“It was only a joke.”

So, you can see how my spirit is fog,
my mind is flayed,
my ears amazed,
my thoughts a foxhole and
my prayers are blocked for lack of air.

And still I mumble. Still, I drop tears like
seed grain on the mudded ground. Still, I have
no idea
where these dust-devil prayers will land. Unmanned,
I hope they hit their target and are enlarged by
the embers sparked
from the One who knows them best. And I pray
that I would be unhanded by the fingers around my
throat, that I, without reproach, could sing, speak,
write, and see without shaking. But still I stumble
over words and rarely remove the filter for anyone
to read or hear the truest words of all.

Oh, Spirit of the Holy, she sees me and embraces me
completely. When I cannot speak, she is silent within,
a silence that burns like a hearth in a mountain cabin.
And within a day, maybe two (to be honest, closer to
a week or more) she restores the clarity I hoped others
would see. She has carried my shakiest and darkest self
as scented candles lit for the Father of us all.