Wednesday, April 30, 2008

beauty

Today there is a poem for the beautiful one.

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.


I am still trying to figure things out, but I could not do with without friends to support and criticize me where I am failing. The Living God will bring what he has started to completion. I am sick of sin and tired of it's enslaving nature. May He lift up all those who are stuck under those who are in power. May those in power be faithful with what they have been given. Not to use and exploit the poor and needy but to serve them as a true leader would do. Even more, may I be faithful with what I have been given, for I have not been. As a son of God, I accept God's grace for the wrongs I have done, and I have the Holy Spirit acting in power in my life. There is no longer any room for sin inside my heart, take away these bonds and replace them with love.

I can't change my own heart!