The Silk Road

There our dreams fluttered desperately,
Striving against elastic tides of hope and fear,
Prostrated on nature's web of doom.
No gods, no masters, beastly brain soaring free,
Aspiring among alters of devices held dear,
Our sly sibyl crying 'Peace' too soon.

For while we loose the chains of the divine,
A master's yoke remains of planetary death,
Our god we venerate like an Atlas child.
Knowingly caught in nature's intent to malign,
As fools unaware of proximate powers that vex,
We trust the facade of our executioner's smile.

So stuck, we strain to subdue our captor,
Our callous killer who stalks, not right nor wrong,
Ready to bite, at any moment, and finish it all.

Buried beneath this cosmic wasteland
My soul lay trapped in earth’s blackest core:
Thy power struck its defiant sands;
I choked; the tunnel engulfed with war;
Thou fought death: my lungs sucked in freedom:
I crawled up, ran, and embraced Thy Kingdom

Things Above

Though I once was desperate,
caught in the terror stricken fangs of
darkness,
cold and naked, spewing out life.
Now I am clothed in You,
as when exposed to the
early morning sun, whose
warmth
hits my skin and preserves vibrancy.
The destroyed faces renewel
in the light of Your countenance,
beaming down in whispering smiles
of affection and delight.
You shine forth splendid rays of
hope
from Your holy hill, where Your
faithful leap and dance in
Your paternal presence.
And though I see You not,
I know Your works:
dazzling delicacies unfolding
in the palm of Your hand,
rivers that cut like childhood's
play, and swing into the ocean
at the end of the day.
Nature sings a different tune,
surging forth in melodious praise,
always new and never old.
In this stillness I sit content,
not wanting to lose the song
in the cacophony of sounds from an
empiricist world.
Yes, I plainly hear, but what I
hear is deeper than the caverns
in my head. I hear
a host elsewhere proclaiming
glory to the One who
established it all for us.