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