Once More Again
What is this gaze you set upon me once more,
not of trifling concerns or errant thoughts,
but Eternal considerations and pending judgments,
all heavier than heart or mind or soul can bear?
Then trapped in silence vibrating like a drum,
listening for Your whispering voice while shifting my eyes,
While hearing only the rattle of my transgressions
gathered for your purview as on a signed confession.
From these years, these things, and other years more,
an accountant’s ledger of debt upon debt,
withdrawals from the storehouse of Your good will,
for which a sentence of endless waiting is rightfully passed.
Then as I’m convinced my guilt condemns all,
the mile-long litany of wrongdoing is supplanted by broken chains
tossed to the ground and ground into particles of nothing
that leaves only pardon and the image of Your likeness once more.


