A Preacher's Prayer

Here in this foggy clearing of  words,
may your Word emerge
like a deer from the forest
to grace with a glimpse  
breathtaking Beauty that gazes 
with soft eyes of wondering kindness 
before leaping once more into  cover.

I understand I cannot look upon You
too long for fear my soul
will be burned into blindness 
like eyes that gaze upon the  sun.
Every now and then, though, 
peek through fog with white flick of tail
so I remember this weary chase is not in vain.

I keep watch at poetic edge of language
like a child mesmerized by lava lamps 
where molten fluidity rises 
in ever-unique amoeboid shapes
on a journey destined 
only to fall back down again 
into fiery primordial ooze.  

My fellow creatures know our place in time:
death has numbered our days,
but it cannot change
your ways of Being Itself,
and your first law of thermodynamics--
matter is neither created or destroyed;
it’s all only energy changing forms. 
  
We’re but earthly lava lamp lumps 
rising to fall back into 
your glowing meonic potential 
at the end of foggy language
where hidden Word awaits revelation
in glory’s full fire, 

uncontained by any form,
yet resurrecting all fallen shapes
with animating Being-Itself,
transforming even death
into fiery minuet of glory 
that discloses oozing forms 
of Beauty’s brief emergence.  
 
But while I have breath to praise, 
let me look for graced glance of promise
on the days’ hot haze of horizon 
where time falls into eternity’s rising
and, seeing form approaching, 
give chase through burning fog
with glowing globs of leaping words.

      © 2001 Tess Lockhart.  All rights reserved.