"in the wilderness..."

“I had been chipping at the world idly,
and had by accident
uncovered vast
and labyrinthine further worlds
within it.”
― Annie Dillard

i sat in the
dust that day
surrounded by
the strata-laced
cliffs of
human history...

a wilderness
of loves lost,
and loves found...

proud moments,
the darkest nights,
the wrongest wrongs and
the rightest rights...

and towering on either side
a sandstone
autobiography of
all I'd done
and all I thought I'd never be...
but was

I chipped away
at one layer and then
another,
but the vein of
hurt went too deeply
and all my tools,
too fragile for the
job at hand
lay discarded around me
like
the treasures found in
pyramids of
pharaohs

a sword,
a stave,
an amulet of myrrh
a toolbox for the nether world
to chase away the
demons of
the past

mine were
not so handy...
books on how to help myself,
aphorisms,
and all I'd learned

but they lay bent and
broken and
my fingertips were
raw from
chipping,
scratching,
clawing away at the
stony face of
who I'd been...

until,
tired and aching with
frustration and
regret
a curled against the wall
of blood red
sand and dust and
soft sobs
leaked from
my broken heart in
trickles of
humility...

a rivulet of hope...

and suddenly
as quiet as a dove's
ascent
beneath my
heaving breast
the rock began to
crumble,
fracture,
dissolve
under the tender
touch of
a tear...

deeper and deeper
it fell away...

until
the stream of tears
found
a wellspring of
innocence,
purity,
and
"all things new"

waters sweet with
promise,

rushed up to
bathe my
eyes with holiness
my heart with
grace

and I was
saved...

"and behold,
angels came and ministered unto him..."
― Matthew 4: 11