God, why have you left me here?
I would have traded anything
For a glimpse of you.
Slow syllables that never resolve to words
Growl out of me, but no one hears.
At night, need holds my eyes open,
But no answer comes.
There is no peace in the silence,
Only disquiet.
Yet, you are here;
Higher, holy, throned none the less.
Since the day you gathered your people,
They have trusted you. Like children,
They cried and you came,
Quick and fey; bright as day.
You held nothing back.
You gave them no lack.
But I am a worm—
Hardly a child of yours.
I shock everyone who sees me.
They hide their mouths behind their hands,
But I can feel their words cut.
They can’t help but laugh
As if they have never seen
Someone who has hoped in God
And still been left. They watch
For rescue that doesn’t come.
They say, “He’s lost. He’s hung there.
Let the Lord snatch him up.”
You have been my God
From the ordinary altar
Of my mother’s womb,
So why this ridicule?
It is more than I can stand.
Be near. Help me. Trouble gathers.
I may have only one last trust left in me.
Fear rushes at me like bulls
That won’t be balked or backed down.
My heart’s wax all melts.
I am cross bound and heaving.
My body is broke and my friends have fled.
I wear the shock, the stun,
The dust of the dead.
Any fool could count my bones
When they come to gloat and gape
At what faith bought me.
They see me sorted and sifted, nailed here,
Hammered between bone and bone.
They dicker over my possessions.
I am split and rattled like dice in a cup.
All night, I writhe to the cock’s crow,
While deep heaven’s snowflake bread
Flickers and falls everywhere for the taking.
But, Lord, there was never a moment
When you were somewhere else.
Lift my limp body down
And plant it somewhere safe.
I will grow greater in the dark.
Make me a banner for my bones risen.
Gather my griefs and paint them
In wide arcs on a blood canvas.
I didn’t know what any of it meant,
But my faith was still a hallowed hammer
And your love a hanging tree.
God, when you tapped the world, it rattled.
When you spoke, everything hushed
And bent to hear. When you breathed,
Every blooming thing burst to life.
When you broke a trumpet blast at last,
The dead all stood and shook themselves
And rose, blinking at the light.
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