I have to admit that it scares me a little to bring this one to light because it may be one of the more raw and for that one of the more true poems that I have ever written. Not true in the sense of portraying objective reality, but true rather in the grasping at a sense of the interior reality that sometimes becomes known to us.
So, as the audience is so tiny, and consists mostly of the sympathetic, I garner the courage to place this among the poems of the recent past.
Advent
They say a season of light
but this light comes from fuel
of the human heart and thus becomes
a season of ash and dust
a season of endless lament
as we wait for a joyless birth
as we wait for the disappointing
consummation of all.In the vast meaningless
emptiness of what we see and do
Advent is the hardest darkness
because the heart that has been
indurated cannot bear nor even see
the light.For some joy, for others an endless
tunnel and this hand is dealt out
blindly. God allows what He allows
and there is no stinting on it.
For some the love of God is made
manifest in this bitterness
in the taste of ash.
I can pretend no longer
His absence cracks my heart
and releases nothing
chained as I am to dust.
Somewhat more bleak (rueful grin) than some of the others--but a glimpse of the landscape. For those who have seen it, think of the Anthony Hopkins version of Titus Andronicus and the finding of the sister and you have a sense of it. It comes and it goes and it does not torment even as it does and I can't explain it any more than that--chained as I am to dust.
