Good Friday 2018

I slurp my tea gratefully
in the wee small hours
of Good Friday.  The clock
ticks quietly, it is quiet
and intense outside, freezing.
In here the bed is cold
I put the blanket on.

I pace with Thomas Merton
my thoughts and Hours.
This is a sombre week
when the spirit burns low
like a spent wick.  I feel

done in:  beaten, exhausted,
I bleed from my long-broken
heart, my weary weary bones.
My broken body groans.  The
huge unwieldy cross - long
carried - moans again the
plaintif song of sorrow,
death, regret.  Absence

always speaks its presence
to me in my waking hours.
My dreams are bad
and do not let me sleep.

I have miles to go
and memories I keep
wrapped about my heart
like a bandage, like a
splint.  They weep.

I sat tonight in vigil
holding hands with
The One who freely
died for me.  He knew
I knew not what
I did my life long -
young and naive we get
many things wrong.

Time carries us away
like a fast stream
there is no paddling against it.
I dream of my mother
sometimes, sweet, fleeting

and I wake to 
reality and a cold
dawning.  It is darker
here without her
and I have sincerely
hated most of my days,
filled as they were with 
drudge and the nasty
acts of those I had to suffer
day-in, day-out.

Now I am my own
Master, in this place
in these days.  Perhaps
some peace will raise me
from prostrate, my
cheek cold against the ground.

I pray and think.  I think
and pray.  I hope my
days have time to grow
a gentle rhythm that will
flow away the pain
and I can be whole again

as I once was
when I was young and gay.
The wearing years
grate us away -
I am worn to a hard nib
and lost
in a forest of thought.

I too have a 
sombre crown, not one
I asked for but was given.
My life has been riven
by too much sense, seeing
the numinous
that not many see, knowing
an unseen reality.

I am weary of experience
and only want to
know quiet days with less
of everything.  I love
to hear the birds sing, I love
the sound of the wind
in the trees.  I love
the sight of the rain sweeping
and my fire crackling.

This place is medicine
after long illness and
wandering in hard places.
O let me be blessed.
O let all traces of sorrow
be wiped away
and I can stand.

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