I Don’t Wander Far

I Don’t Wander Far

(“Let us strive to know the Lord. His appearance is as sure as the dawn. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the land.” Hosea 6:3)

I don’t wander very far from home these days;
I follow the path my feet have made looping the same
walkway today and tomorrow, Mondays and Yesterdays
and hold conversations in the late afternoon.
Sometimes I wonder if you hide from me,
or if it is me who masks my existence.
There are hints of perfume past the cherry trees
that have not yet blossomed. It is early March
and they are shaded by apple trees on the sunward side.

I have all day to rehearse the accompaniment
for a dozen voices this week. But I don’t like
the arrangement and my talents are rusty from
like of use.

I’d tell you more about what hovers within
but it would be the same story as a year ago,
the same yearnings, and mostly unmet,
that have grappled with my mind from the beginning
of my certainty that you would speak to me in ways
that would change my disappearing face into something
more beatific. I’ve searched for ecstatic visions just within
my latched doors. I should play my music more.

The trail I take every day is taller on one end than the other,
I arrive home, though, at the same altitude I began.
I should spend more time with my fingers
strumming my guitar.
Or hear words I could pour out in rhymes and
rhythms you could understand.

I pray the day will close with at least a line
of divine poetry as I wait like the trees for
Spring.