The Trajectory of My Ennui

The Trajectory of My Ennui

(“’For I am the Lord who acts with gracious love, justice, and righteousness in the land. I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:24)

The trajectory of my ennui
landed me at the corner of the sea.
I was too late to see
the tidepools and their creatures.
I wondered where the other seekers had landed.

The tide was up full, the sand lapped up
the foam and held the captured seaweed to
compliment the scalloped design flat until
the cliffs that rose above it all.

I tried to compose myself, I tried to understand
how I had missed the very
thing I longed for; how I began my mission
thinking there was so much more.
I shook without thinking, there was no one else
on the shore. The wind salted my day and I had
nowhere else to go.

The language of the waves was incoherent as
they hid craggy black homes of the
sea anemones and urchins. Nearly neon,
their green and purple sheen waited below the
atonal words of the tide’s uncovering.

A line of stone, a short-wall and a bedrock
cornerstone,
outlined the ruins of an ancient fortress. The
foundation was filled with
water and sand.
Once built to protect the legal citizens,
It was now a haven for starfish and hermit crabs.

Times When Silence

 

Times When Silence

(“May your gracious love come to me, your salvation, just as you said.” Psalm 119:41)

There were times when following
looked like abandonment. The voices were
shapeless,
the promises faceless,
and the landscape so concrete you
could not help walking on the cracks.

Though the path predates me
I’m the one who has felt old lately.

Some days I hate the rain, other days the
storm is passion and promise, dotting my windows
and animating trees preparing for the slumber of winter.

Sweet dreams, they say,
and sometimes they are. When doves
pair up in your attic
you should not complain of loneliness.

There are times when silence
feels like applause, one moment when love
has drawn all existence into itself and landscapes
melt like wax. Below the windy earth
and above the laconic sky, mercy awakens,
a single syllable unworded.