New Poems

I have not written much poetry in quite some time. It seems to me that the academic process blocks much of my creative powers. Yet, the other day as I was reading a new book, "Through the Eyes of Another," I was struck by a quote detailing the difference between the hermeneutic of the ordinary reader and the hermeneutic of Biblical scholarship/exegetical work. The author wrote that the latter studies for knowledge and power and the former for hope and expectation, the former primarily made up of marginalized and oppressed people groups. So, the two poems here revolve around the idea of hope and expectation. I pray that, as a student of Biblical scholarship, my own desires would shift from knowledge and power to hope and expectation. The two are both untitled. I hope that they bless you all. Peace. Dan
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Pink, orange, and yellow shades of twilight
linger here still at nine twenty in the evening.
Dusk makes no rush to push forward
the hands of time; impatience seems foreign today.

The smell of an ultralight cigarette hangs in the air,
evidence of shared conversation and lack of confidence.
And the most recent memories still echo laughter
off of the well acousticed walls.

A hole in the day, a moment of hope and expectation,
carved out of the wooden monotony of one hundred forty eight hours
passing fifty two times throughout a life span -
one brief hour full of love and light and contagious illumination.

Here we reach filthy hands deep into wells of water
that churns and turns and bubbles with life giving stuff,
and as we cup the fluid into our mouths, over our heads,
we drink, and are bathed, in something deeper than the blood we spill.
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Here do I sit waiting, patiently or impatiently, I am unsure.
For what, I am certain. The strength of a yearning desire
to no longer search for knowledge and power
but to adventure into hope and expectation.

Here do I lay, shedding skins of past goals,
peeling away blinding scales of false promises -
denuded, born again naked before the only goal
for which any and all strivings are made worthy.

Here do I rest, brought to peacefulness, returned
to a brief moment of intimate darkness where all is settled,
save for the dust and ashes of something dead swirling
in a wind that I have never seen.

Here do I reach out, to touch that which gives life,
to be embraced by that which I can only touch
with the finger tips of my imagination
and caress and kiss with the often uttered prayers of my lips.