Vespers

I cradle the incense of aurora in my cupped hands,
the saffron sky an echo of promises,
a morning psalm coursing through my arteries,
unwavering as the breath between prayers.

Yes, I have heard the thunder of prophets
speak beneath stained-glass ceilings
their voices pellucid, braided with conviction,
thick as honey poured from a cold urn.

And yet
the vacant wail of children,
the quiet drip of neglect,
the sharp tang of cruelty in the air
all slice my dreams with razors of doubt.
Where are You?
when the fragile break like sugar candy
under the tremor of unholy fists?

I cannot ignore these echoes.
They cling to the pews, to the sleepless nights.
Evil swells, fermenting in the world’s gut:
mass graves like open mouths,
bruised wives behind shut doors,
bellies gnawed by famine.

If You are good,
why does plague linger in the vapor of the innocent?
If You are kind,
why is peace coughed up in lumps of ash?

Here’s where I pause
the wheels in me grinding,
a searchlight from some deeper well,
remembering:
germs flourish in a simple garden,
and a beam surfaces even in the final hour of night.

My mind draws swords against each doubt,
forging retorts from the foundry of faith:
Pain is not the final script,
but a chapter
an enigma of refining blaze.
God, immeasurable, beyond the black latitudes of reason,
unfolds His tapestry on eternity’s loom.

And I know You,
yes, as I know the one who shares my table and my bed
the shape of her laughter,
the curve of her exhale,
the unspoken language only lovers speak.
I feel Your presence with that same intimacy,
as real as the heart’s knocking… it quickens again.

Now, my eyes slip into the clay from which I came.
I am loam, a made-to-hold cracked by time,
a jar leaning toward the potter’s steady hand.
He is sovereign,
the great artificer who bends blaze into daybreak.

So I stand
in the still, burnished cradle of believing:
a prophet who sees both aurora and midnight,
holds them in tension,
and yet remains sure that Goodness
outlasts the night,
outlasts the question
until all shall bow to Him who shaped the clay
Into those He calls His Own
From before time.