I step through the wood of my soul, hushed by the breathless winter pre-dawn, gray as geese wings, touched by the softest whisper of a star’s light, shining unseen beyond the snow clouds.
Is it the ageless light of angelic faces?
Shall we see them brighten the sky’s lofty ceiling?
Shall the glory of the Lord be seen once more upon our mortal plain?
I step to the fringes of my soul, where the swaying ferns once grew, and the white stag once grazed, and the lips of June once kissed the lips of our inner Eden, our paradise lost…
Where is the guardian with his flaming sword?
Is he not within myself, splitting me down the center?
Where is the binding for my grievous wound?
I stand on the hill of my soul, setting common cares aside, as the frost licks the grass blades, immersed in wondering and foreboding, knowing that the longest night has begun to prepare for the sun.
Shall it rise upon our dancing day?
Will our Beloved beckon us to His great wedding feast?
We dream our infant dreams…
I stand by the river of my soul, its running brooks frozen like the blood of frightened animals when the hunters are upon them, hunters come to rob us of life through cold’s clinging.
And is this cold so unlike our icy hellfire, that we ourselves created?
Is not the bitten apple the mirror of our broken worlds?
We still search for the fairest of them all…
I stand at the crossroads of my soul, the liminal line, the knowledge of good and evil my parents deigned to choose for themselves, which I am
too often drawn to mimic.
For is not evil a shadow of a good, a deception of reality?
A proclivity, a condition, a crack, a coil,
a curse that may yet turn to blessing, a happy fault?
I stand in the meadow of my soul, that winter had won, and hear a silence more lovely than music unfolding from the center of all things,
through which all things hold together.
Where will the dusty road lead the wandering pilgrim?
Where will the cobbled street lead the pining lover?
Is any path so far it cannot lead us home?
I stand in the city of my soul, and Bethlehem’s bread is the innocence we have long forgotten, long cast aside in our smug assurance, though inside
we are only lost little children.
Dare we hope for some comfort and joy?
Dare we hope the fractious power itself will be torn asunder?
And grace streams down upon the blind, the lame, the sore-stained?
I stand at the stable of my soul, and find a mother exhausted from birthing, lying in the straw, bringing forth the incarnate Word as light through glass, singing into the heart of creation a ballad of love.
And is that a wounded knight I see, as a newborn?
Is the blood of birth but a shadow of the flood to come?
The crimson wine that will melt the ice?
I stand beside the manger of my soul, and the image of my God takes fleshly substance, that He might be emptied out, all-vulnerable,
shape of every tomb a womb.
Shall I bring a lamb to bleat, or my drum to play?
Shall I bring cheese, butter, and honey for the Lady’s pleasure?
Shall I bring gold for a king, incense for a god, or spices for a corpse?
I stand at the tree of my soul, springing up like the thorn bush, prickling like poverty, then sprouting emerald leaves and bearing scarlet fruit, and it is a tree of life and death and life restored…
O Noble tree, what fruit may be thy peer?
Sweetest wood, may my lips adore thee with a kiss?
And let winter-wearied hearts give birth to spring…