Grace

Visit me at: http://rolaphoenicia.blogspot.com/

The bombs began to fall
on a warm summer night
'Forgive me child, the timing is not my own'
her daughter into her ancestral home
land of milk and honey
and death
breaking a million hearts

Fleeing to freedom
over continents and millennia
huddled in the shelter of better hopes
for better days
and peace.

Peace of a thousand definitions
None of which were located in the new lands
or the brave unknown world
bombs traded for crushing loneliness
and shattering isolation
disjointed, disoriented and lost.
My precious souls
lost among the ghosts and the struggle
and the will to survive.
Ravaged by the years
stripping one layer of self away with every cold winter and waking nightmare
more is stripped away and vanishes
into the wind.

Mourn.

Endless procession of grotesque pageantry
to the burial.
ashes to ashes
dust to dust
grandmothers and prophets
saints and whores
messiahs and grifters
land of milk and honey.
Pound yourself with grief
wail and let your sea of tears
drown,
hide the graveyard of your heart
in its belly.

The difficult years in a foreign land
other peoples reservations
filled with other traumas and souls
seeking refuge
find little
but brave in the search.

In the end
Everything is lost.

With no one to catch the falling children
to collect the babies
their bodies crushed and trampled
left in the gutter
evil will claim them
death offers freedom
unclaimed
instead the desperate thrashing for safety
and clawing for solid ground
unrequited requests for help and salvation
friendship that redeems.

Only one
little one
escapes the carnage to breath again.
After decades
poverty
and barrenness
the greyest of the lonely depths
small gulps of air
Alive.

Crawling and parched
emerging from the desert
an olive tree
a fig tree
they bare fruit
life of a new moon
swollen with the Holy.
Her Annunciation
And the angels herald a new beginning.
Anew.
Hers.

Grace.

You can't imagine what stretches behind me.

Grace.

Visit me at: http://rolaphoenicia.blogspot.com/