Dread.
I feel it still.
Laying
at the base
of my throat
and throbbing dully,
quietly slumbering
with one leering eye
cocked open always
and leaning towards
my heart.
My heart…
chipped and worked,
touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers
of dread and
shards of it lay scattered
at my feet clear,
jagged glimmering
broken.
I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering, but
2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.
It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could.
It was a year
without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.
There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured
by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just
the fog behind and the early dark
ahead awaiting dawn.
and Dread
and my heart shaped
in its cold hands
and God’s Warm Heart.
Across the prow of my ship
the rain slants and glints
in the deck lights (dark lights)
like silvery needles
sent to stitch
the past and future
together in this moment.
I think of Presences.
Emptiness…
Nothing…
Silences…
Absences…
Love…
Memories…
Hope…
Them…
there and here with me
in time and triumph,
tears and tragedy
but only One
does my heart
awaken in this dawn
and set afire tears
upon my face
a God of grace,
a God of love,
a God of…justice?
Justice.
I don’t even know where
to start with that!
I face forward
into dawn’s early light
empty,
confused,
seeking,
the way of grace
not effort!
Charissa's Grace Notes 
Your use of words continues to amaze me. It’s so natural. This new year is a time for new beginnings, isn’t it? If we look back and are honest, we had no way of knowing we would end up HERE. I guess that means that in this next year anything is possible, right? 🙂
Kat, thank you for always looking deeper in my work. This poem is a heart within a heart. It is very intentional in its contrasts and ambiguities, it’s stark and amorphous all at once.
Words and sentences chosen to echo the theme of a heart shaped and fashioned and the resulting shards… Word shards, sentence shards…
The list of 8 presences… They all match up in order each to each in the 2 stanzas… The word play of present and presence…
This is fundamentally a poem of hope, surrender, intention… And it is honest too about how hard it is to choose doors when there are no Windows to look from first.
New Beginnings… That start where the old endings are laid to rest.
It’s amazing. 🙂
“It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew or if it even could.”
The Depth of this…WOW!!
Reblogged this on Charissa's Grace Notes and commented:
I am reblogging this poem from 2 years ago…here is the key passage:
“I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog thick and lingering,
but 2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more than a dream.
It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew or if it even could…”