Prayer for Empty Hands

Give me strength
In these two hands
To do what I must do.

Give me the strength
To fulfill the demands
Of a writer's task. Renew

Again and again at length
The weakening bands
Of mind and body. View

With grace my empty strength,
And fill these hands
With bread, to make a new

Body in this old length
Of flesh. Fill these hands
With words like wine, true

Writer's blood. By the length
And breadth of grace, by the hands
Whose holes proclaim true

Strength, I plead for strength.
Give into my weary hands
The grace to do what I must do.


After being sick for two weeks and missing more school than I've ever missed in my life, I have work to do. A full weekend and week and month of it ahead.

Between Earth and Earth

This looks like a poem, and I'm categorizing it under poems, but it's not much of a poem yet. In other words, if you call it a poem, it's a bad one; but if you call it the first impression of a poem not yet written (and probably never to be written), then it might not look so bad. I myself would call it "rambling in linear form," but one must categorize somehow. (Translated: I'm lazy and I'm done with this poem for now and I know it's far from perfect but I'm posting it anyway and my conscience is nagging me for it.)



How little now stands
between me and the ground.
Two legs, a strange support
that can hardly balance
at the best of times—
small wonder, being as they are
incongruous pillars of
blood and bone and sinew,
which are, of course, only dust
lashed together by a few words.

And what supports those legs
but the spirit that is in the man?
Upon that fragile clothesline hangs
every limp muscle between my head and foot,
each one pinned to that lifeline
expecting to be filled with breath:
the wind of life or spirit of air
that can turn heavy, drooping fabric
into dancing raiments
quick with movement.

Even so, with borrowed air
and many borrowed words
to hold together my shaking line
upon which hang so many
unlike things—even so,
my feet are weak, my knees
wobbly, my legs too much like
wet fabric; and this
damp line of earth
the only thing that stands
between me and the earth.

So, stumbling again like a child
I ask to enter the world again
like a child, trusting to
others' legs to hold me up
and others' arms to catch me
while I go running
(stumbling, falling)
with grateful wonder
towards each new thing
and each old thing
I find in the way. I may
be wobbly, yes, and perhaps never
quite sure where I'm going;
often running off-course
through the weakness of my legs;
often needing that someone with
surer footing to pick me up
and help me on my way;
but always following the path,
never doubting that
running on wobbly legs
is better than not moving at all.

Song of the Valley

To be sung in the manner of Chesterton

Splendid rides the sunset o'er the garden of the Lord
Where summer spreads its colors on the hills like emerald wine
And the mowers raise the incense of the grass and of the soil
And the ponds and trees and houses gleam like grapes upon the vine
In the sun that smites the valley with the brightness of a sword:
In this cool and quiet garden in the center of the world
Where the people's death and living makes a song of righteous toil
In this precious piece of nowhere in a corner of the world;
In this garden of the people which is sacred to the Lord.