Sunday, April 7, 2019

It is a peculiar call


It is a peculiar call, 
beginning from within
not without, a sense 
that it’s time to be lost,
to lose a self for a time,
a call from the west
that begins in the heart,
the heart I feel beating,
keeping time in the west.

Miles away, I’m walking 
through woods, forest,
and prairie and brush 
and hills and wildflowers,
this cathedral offering
spired branches and 
trailed naves and
the hymns of the wind. 
The offering is self.

I add my voice to the wind:
the crunch of my feet
meeting fallen leaves
on the trail, accompanied
by a stick’s periodic snap.
Bare unruined branches
sway above me, a shelter
casting shadow and light,
and I look for the altar.

The editors of Tweet6speak Poetry are hosting a 30-Day, 30-Poem Challenge for Earth Month entitled, appropriately enough, Poetic Earth Month. Today, the featured poem is “North on the Illahee Ferry” by Ann Doe Overstreet, and the poetry promptis to write a poem about distance or experience that is very small, pulling back every few lines to consider distance or vastness. I reversed that in this poem.

1 comment:

Pamela M. Steiner said...

I love your poem today...that "cathedral" in the woods is something that I am always in search of as we take walks...God's special place that leads to an altar of worship and praise as we consider His works and the gifts of His hands so lovingly bestowed upon us. Thank you for this today.