There is a language that God has spoken in all things, in people, in nature, in experience that I long to see and hear and express. So I reach out and try to connect these to metaphors and narratives and sketches like a journalist reports the news. As I approach the completion of The Damned May Enter, I find the need to extend myself as I work through some of the more critical parts of the book. This has driven me to attenuate my senses so I can receive the words I cannot grasp through thought alone. So, I have ventured outside the confines of the book by regularly drafting sketches from my window. The desk where I write sits below the lone window in my room, and I sit and look and write what I see and reach out to find the meaning God has written in his creation. These efforts stand adjacent to my book, but I hope they enhance my vision and capacity to perceive. So I offer this encouragement to my fellow brothers and sisters who are also compelled by the pen – learn to see and hear the Word that suffuses everything seen and unseen, heard and unheard. It is a perilous task to open your heart to the world, but it is the only way to hone your craft and share it with the people who just might need to hear your voice.

So I offer this poem. I don’t write much poetry these days, and I’m not so sure it is any good. That seems to be quite beside the point. It is drawn from my window sketches and I hope it might spur my friends who also write, many more gifted than I, to pay attention to the world around them. Meditate on what you see and hear and try to capture in some small way the beauty that hovers all around you. Sorry about the formatting, WordPress wasn’t cooperating, but here it is imperfections and all:

Window to the Night

Fading marmalade drips down the evening horizon,

pressed under the black and blue curtain of night.

Trees rise upward into the dark,

many handed javelins in light’s last breath,

their inky shadows stain the hills beneath them.

Sunscape’s sharp distinctions blur;

the nocturne kingdom descends

and draws up unspoken secrets

from the land it touches.

Crickets sound and resound syncopated lullabies

while the world drifts to dreams.

 

The peculiar mystery of the day,

singular and nevermore

moves from present to past;

to memory

or forgetfulness,

held in the mind or released or both.

Lonely eyes alone can hear

the wordless language of the sky,

the rhythms of time present

and time gone by.