My God, This throbbing life is my inheritance.
What pastures lie beyond
This plight of ignorance?
A wrinkled old man’s face may cast a glance
And regret the smooth complexion of romance.
Those seedless thoughts the richest soil lay waste.
It is life’s recoil, winter deep.
Leaves brown, down tumble
Brittle trinkets of decay,
Whirled and swirled in a fairy’s jingle.
Death is bleak. Death is hollow.
Gusted to its hallowed portal
From age old mound of earth moist
Springs life again, seeping from the wilderness.
Flicker that flame, sweet tremors from below
Now enclose life’s thrust
And murmurs from below,
Glow now, baited breath and bellows
Bare those heated coals
Till life in rapture ruptures
Earth’s crust and steaming lava flows
To woo man forth.
Pitched past the verge in God’s art
Of mysteries limitless,
The sun arches low across the sea.
Each crested wave of growth
Weeps bitter tears in death
And crimson droplets conceive the birth of newness.
Who could have guessed these patterns of time?
But He who spied her weave insects,
Yield each wing to fly or swallow mould,
Suck sap from the earth moist,
Men’s seedlings plant till flesh unfolds
From nature’s nurturing.