For Father Kimel
So you will preserve me too,
and what you have given me will grow and reach perfection,
and I will be with you; because this too is your gift to me
– that I exist
Augustine
The Beach and I became brothers in blood.
When I was a child I stepped upon a broken bottle –
perhaps it was all that remained of a tide-tossed message
whose words became water.
When I was a child I stepped upon a broken bottle
and my blood became the sand
and my blood became the water
and the scar remains as does the sand
and the Beach became my brother.
The sea-song remains with me and the Sea remains Herself,
refracting a thousand broken shafts of Sunfire.
The Sea remains my Mother,
singing Her song to me and to my brother.
The Sea remains Herself
and her tides proceed toward Her shoreward sons
and we return again, enfolded in Her arms
and the song never ends.
© Jedidiah Paschall – September 6, 2018
ST. JUDE'S TAVERN 
I don’t understand it, but I like it. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Eclectic Orthodoxy and commented:
I have never had a poem dedicated to me. Thank you, Jed. I am honored.
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My pleasure Fr. Kimel. I know that you put in a lot of work on your St. Dionysus series and it opened my heart to some profound truths and deep questions I never explored before.
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What a wonderful poem! I’ll go read all the poems on the site. You should send them to magazines, the world needs such poetry.
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Hi Jed,
I love the poetic concept. Great thoughts about the simple complexities on our everyday life. I hope deep stories and ideas don’t always require blood, pain, and tears, but come on, they do.
In Christ,
Gary
On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 12:58 AM ST. JUDE’S TAVERN wrote:
> jedidiahpaschall posted: “For Father Kimel So you will preserve me too, > and what you have given me will grow and reach perfection, and I will be > with you; because this too is your gift to me – that I exist > Augustine The Beach and I became brothers in blood” >
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Thanks Gary – yes there is an uncanny link between art and suffering. Fortunately, I was about 5 when I stepped on the bottle, and at the time, I thought that the cut was pretty cool. I still have the scar, and ironically, there’s still sand in it. So, wherever I go, the beach goes with me. That was the thought behind the poem, or one of them at least.
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Very cool. Mine is a spear on my side from a near appendix death. It was the prod I got from the Lord to not waste my life.
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