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Poem: That Unutterable Yearning

I don't know about where you live, but the California heat is creeping into a previously mellow June. I hope you all are able to get outside and get fresh air in God's beautiful creation. Yesterday I was able to spend time at the beach, which was lovely: both refreshing and invigorating.

I thought I'd share with you today one of my poems I wrote in January. This is one of my personal favorites.


 

That Unutterable Yearning


In a streetlight tall and lonely

In the deepening of the ocean

An expanding ache unnerving

That unutterable yearning

In the strokes of ancient paintings

In a sentence on a page

A desire for belonging

That insatiable longing


Who can speak it

Though we hear it

Reaching out in vain to grasp it

In the darkest of the echoes from a far and lusty bell

Who can say it

Though we sense it

Close our eyes and try to soothe it

In the wonder of a hatchling pushing through a fragile shell


In a flock of birds ascending

In the train tracks stretching on

An emotion old returning

That unutterable yearning

In a wail of a fiddle

In the swaying of a dance

Quiet homesickness prolonging

That insatiable longing


Who can speak it

Though we watch it

Drink it in when we discern it

In the isolating flakes of every snow that ever fell

Who can say it

Though we feel it

Push away and try to drown it

In the simmering of cider and its rich, embracing smell


In a dusty ray of sunlight

In the vastness of the desert

A relentlessness is churning

That unutterable yearning

In the sucking of an infant

In a long delayed embrace

Sharper pains of hunger thronging

That insatiable longing


Who can speak it

Though we know it

Our entire beings scream it

In the pulsing of our veins and in the structure of each cell

Who can say it

Though we pray it

Spirits crave beyond created

Deep within Imago Dei making known its presence well


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