I am not mine
Solely Exclusively
But I am bought with a price
Of Blood Dreams and Grief
My ancestors toiled and fought
For a better life.
Kings of earth and princes and pilgrims
Have borne my blood
To this land
To this day
Where it flows through this body
Entrusted to my care.
But still Named Nurtured and Taught
By others
By teachers
By friends
By Family
My Parents' words worries and tears
Carved canyons in my psyche that
Spell out my person my past memories and moral
I am not my own
But bought with a price of centuries
And Firstly and Lastly
Bought with that blood
Of God become Man
Become Sacrifice for me.

The morning light
Catches the triumph
Of the empty tomb.
The very earth shook
And reels still
In the conviction of his victory.
All of nature magnifies
His unconquerable light.
He shares his life as he ever shared it.
Freely, Lovingly, Perfectly, with us.
And he dries every tear
And restores every life.
No sorrow too heavy, grief too deep, sin too black
Nor even death
To stop his divine love.
Why look we for the living among the dead?
He is not here,
For he is risen!

We accept the love we think we deserve
Excepting Christ's love because
Accepting Christ's love
Fills the world past overflowing,
Flooding our souls, our lives,
Our love is made more by His
And our lives renewed by His
Our hope, our brightest hope
Is him
In Him we live
If we let Him live in us
Let his love guide our actions
Because he leads our steps
Into eternity
Our Eternal King
He lives and loves us still.

Underground rivers
Shimmer through the topsoil,
That tints and dims them
As they run south
Under purple valleys
from twin lakes
That bore into the
Center of the Earth
Where secrets flit
Like birds
Learning their wings
And hopes fail
Like old legs
Weary of the gravity
And pebbles set off
Tinny echoes
In the depths.

The Universe is his Palet,
The galaxies and their nebulas
His mixing board.
His canvas stretches beyond the borders of the mind,
This fabric we call Space-Time.
His brush-strokes and blending
Portray so flawless, seamless, effortless a picture,
At times do we fear there is no Painter?
His mural is so vast, broad and deep,
Details illuminate details,
At times do we feel buried in the layers?
And the scene is universal,
Bridging before the beginning and after the end,
Do we feel o'erstepped in it's eternal stride?

We are not.
We are not.
The colors he lay for us,
We take up and live.
And always, His red enlivens our brushes.

The temptation is to sit and still
to invisibility
To lie behind our glass walls, our glassy eyes
And observe and absorb the scenery
Until we sit sure of ourselves
Like the unmoved mountains
To let the traffic and people and feelings
Scuttle along
Without you
To simplify
To simply
Be

The sky is blue
And somehow, it holds hope
Sunshine is warm, even in winter
And my skin craves its caress
A good nap can ease any wound
And you can heal when you wake
The grief of life and death
Means our time is worth something
And the beauty
Means there are mysteries for us yet.

And we need words to assure ourselves
We matter

Haircut

Staying up all night is rarely wise
And never healthy
If I got more sleep
This wouldn't have happened
If I got more sleep
My face wouldn't have been so spotty
If I got more sleep
I would never have seen the scissors.

My Hall

There are people in my hall
Why
My hall, my mop, my job
But there are people in my hall
People with food
People with friends
People watching the game on TV
There are people in my hall with food, friends, and TV
I stand here with my mop
Now sigh
Now join them
Mopping can wait.

Bubbles

I was blowing bubbles in the dark,
the near dark anyway,
and watching the colors spin.
I should go in, I knew,
But I sat on the dorm's dark steps and I bless
Bubbles from a little plastic wand.
It was after work, getting late already,
My night promised to get later still,
What with homework and reading
And I really should clean
And try to act my age.
But where is the fun and laughter
In late night tedium
In real responsibility.
The silence around a lamp-lit textbook
Is deadly, only.
The quiet with the bubbles, a spell.