Find My Way Home

Find My Way Home

(“And he woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, ‘Hush now! Be still!’ The wind dropped and everything was very still.” Mark 4:39)

It might be the streets alone that serenade my return.
I was tossed and turned; I was unspeakably fearful of
the waves that menaced my journey and the wind that
my hopes for survival.

I tried to shake God awake; I tried to make do with my
wafer-thin prayer. I couldn’t make out the immediate response,
the noise was ineffably loud. I hoped I could be seen like
a dove holding tight against the eaves as the storm
caught the best of us unprepared.

All I knew. All I can tell. All I care. All I can bear
was stuffed into a single hour of tempest. And
fear
was the name I gave for the cancellation of
supposed messages of light.

It was gloomy at noon. It was annoyingly
loud.
I heard nothing like the words that struck me when
I first turned toward the sun. I only knew it was time,
it was soon,
it was daytime at its darkest, it was unfortunate
like the folly of rowing upstream.

I only understood that it was time to
find my way home. So, I cowered with faith
at the bottom of my words and fright frothing
over the sides.

And a voice softer than the ripple of the water
on a still and sleepy night
spoke like it already had been decided that
the storm would pass before the day began.
And plainly watching the shoreline from here
I knew it was time to
find my way home.

Tin Daisies

 Tin Daisies

(“To find your life, you must lose your life—and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39)

Everything we need has already been found;
every stretching tree was once a seed in the ground.
Every friend, (you know your name)
has entered time to greet you again,
and all you thought you needed was another
new
face
when the souls of the beloved have
never changed.

That which cannot be tolerated has already
evaporated into healing rain.
That which cannot be comprehended has daily
communicated the artwork in and out
of the frame.
That which was unspoken has
filled our hearts at last.
That which was broken has
first been recast as tin daisies
welded by an artisan. Sand
and sparks,
the arc of the sky inspires darkness
to unveil everything the day had not
yet revealed.

And I hear your footsteps a dozen years removed,
and I hear your voice a thousand miles from here
singing the sweetest blues from
the pub where birthdays are marked,
where adulthood began.
And I stand and wonder that we have found

Anything at all.