Wind, Much Softer than the Mill

Part of the Scene which inspired the Poem

The wind dips His long fingers

To touch the water’s surface.

His gentle stroking lingers

Creating ripples restless.

The Mill stirs not the water so

With whirring whispers waking

The water to its depths would go

No pardon for the taking.

The sun shines flashing softly

Dancing reflections on the work

The wind’s fingers have done deftly

Not stirring up the murk.

The wind, the better of the two,

Knows how to stir the stream

For his ally with him woo

The water with gentle touch and beam.

Yet why we listen to the Mill

It’s churning sounds appealing

It cannot hold the water still

But many souls has it been stealing.

Gentle wind of God I thank thee

Though I hear the Mill of Satan

You always gently guide me

And to my rescue quickly hasten.

My spirit yields to breezes fine

I am rippled by His grace divine

For in His touch all shall find

Slow to anger,

and always kind.

Outside the Storm Comes

Outside the storm comes

And I sit in silence.

Outside the wind howls

And I am fascinated.

I ask, “Let Your Spirit come,

Come like a wind to my soul

But not like that wind.

That wind howls

And blows and

shakes things violently.”

To unstick this inner turmoil,

To paste it onto nature,

Would look much like the fierce gusts outside.

And yet

I sit here, in silence.

And yet I sit here in

Silence.

Peace.

Peace that passes all understanding

Yet understanding

Though the wind blows roughly without

It whispers gently within.

The peace comes not from the storm

But in spite of the storm

And is magnified

       In the blessed contrast.

Shake these unholy things

From my drooping branches!

These unholy, clinging, lifeless forms,

crumpled as they are cut off from

the life source.

In my earnestness to please You

I ask for agony

Yet agony

Must be endured

Though inflicted gently

Lovingly

Your hands shaping me

Removing every dead leaf

Through all the storms

So I may bud

And blossom

And be ever so beautiful.

For now

I am

Standing

Completely naked

Arms stretched
to Heaven

When You live
in my heart.

In the Dead of Winter

Raw open longing like a

Baby bird nests in my

Soul.

Forgiving is easy if you

forget it all and become

absolutely

nothing. But the longing increases with the nothingness until you must become something or else

you’ll burst!

Unfold and unflower, then, in the mid-September when all around you are those

Closing up shop for the coming winter. Dare

To stand unfolded in the dead of winter.

Listen.

Stillness is the first step to meaning then

Out of the nothing springs a hope

Not from the mind of man but from the soul of God speaking

“Child, child, child, child.”

He whispers.

Eyes closed you believe.

Eyes open you see the blank void of whiteness

that comes

Only in the dead of winter.

Don’t close your petals because of what you see

There is more than all this nonchalance and apathy

Color splashes color in the dead of winter but

All the colors are red.

Stained with sin.

A blizzard washes white again.

White fades to white, but now

A glistening ice sculpture has encased your frozen petals.

Silence.

Forgiveness is one frost-melted morning away.

When the Sun comes He warms all things.

Slowly you die, slowly you rise.

You had forgotten how much you loved the Sun

But He has never, never forgotten you.

Awake! Arise!