Caverns

In other posts, I’ve mentioned I’m working on my fourth book, The Anonymity of Waiting. Well, at some point last year I started working on a fifth book at the same time. It started with poems based on the text of Mozart’s Requiem Mass. From there, I moved on to writing poems based on Psalms. I originally thought all these poems would appear in The Anonymity of Waiting, but then I started working on poems based on traditional Christian hymns. I decided the poems based on Psalms, hymns, and the Requiem would go into a sixth book called Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs. (The title is derived from Ephesians 5:19–“Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs….”). My hope is to self-publish this book later this year.

While the content of the Psalms and hymns sections of this new book are fairly prescribed, the spiritual songs section is less defined. Besides the Requiem poems, I decided to include poems from previous books that I thought would qualify as spiritual songs. I didn’t have an exact criteria for these except that they would be devotional in nature. One such poem is “Caverns” from my second book, Event Horizon.

Caverns

Caverns

a cerebrum of tunnels

winding

branching

pathway leading to pathway

full of switchbacks
and crossroads

groping 
along the walls

running into dripstone’s
pointing fingers

ambushed by lunging floors

absorbed in echos

I have wandered here
all my life

There is no exit

Though when I sit 
and close my eyes

when I bow my head
and fold my hands,
You are there—

a light-speed stillness
a singing silence
a hand in mine—

and I am found.