Virtus

Foretold realities, you place your trust in;
- Innate desire for something more
on Days and nights when sadness creeps
and Emptiness is finally felt. Do not
fear. Senses cannot detect what you seek.

Sorrow may enter into your life like
a Prowling lion, but fear it not for
in Every day and age, failure
was Subsequent to the beast's efforts.

Come, rejoice in the rock that saves us!
- Allow the streams of grace and peace
in Radiant glory to fill your soul. Let
the Incessant needs of humanity become
your Trail into gifting your strengths and
speak Always in the person whose
mighty Sacrifice gave us life.

Transubstantiated

Of simple wheat-
plain and bare You are.
Dull in state and stark
in complexion.

Of all vessels, why this?
Ordinary and boring to
all senses but one.
I see a circle.
I taste wheat.
I feel a fragile wafer.
I smell nothing.
I hear nothing...but
that's precisely it.

Silence. Fluid nothing
interrupted by the breathing
from the gift you gave:
Life In Flesh Eternal.

Brown

With boots upon my feet and Joe in my cup;
one cream, two sugars to combat the
bittered blackness of which it was brewed.
Each step towards rest I take upon
this yellowed-reddish blanket of leaves
is, as they say, "blackening" but more revealing
the packed earth below it--step by step.

To gaze upon the barren branches renews
our sense that growth will come again.
Within sight, the cabin, built by hands
of generations past. Pawing on the door, my
friend, who's coat is not black nor gold
but somewhere in between. He waits and
greets his lifelong pal, who left but moments before.

Removed are my shoes and the caked mud
that accompanies them. With the chimney asmoked
and a fire now roaring, I seek my fill
in the chestnut cabinets above the darkened
limestone countertops and drawers of aged oak.

This loaf of wheat just waiting to be toasted
to a crisp and be adorned with peanut
butter: the spread of divine providence.
With newly gathered eggs and bacon sizzling
away, the time to rest is drawing near.

Placing the feast on the wooden table before
me and finding a seat upon this handmade
chair, I breath and sigh and know,
"This is home."

Redemptio

Your grace, O Lord, hath saved all earthly souls
and ever holy are your words of truth.
How easy seems the task to follow Thee
yet many stray with claims of lack of proof.
Not priced yet precious is thy heavenly grace
transformed all hearts for which approach thy font.
Reversing, abandoning--for some you will displace
for faith is changing; grasp need and offer want.
Desert, ambition--functions of our will
are set aside in order to allot
a home, a rock, a source of endless fill
from He who will and is and was Begot.

To lay your life and love before such odds
takes strength, takes glory, takes might--not yours but God's.

Hail! O Holy King of kings!

Hail! O Holy King of kings!
Your gleaming golden surface shines.
Your Face makes silent rooms,
be it I or nations knelt,
harden silence everywhere.
Breathing...breathing.
Silence.

But a thought audible, though faint:
A whisper would deafen all around.
The presence and power,
You melt away the snow banks
of our frozen hearts.
Name above all names,
We adore you.