like the psalmist foe-surrounded

poverty
or
surfeit
which we find by the world
by the devil
have betrayed us

what is left
despite the industries

I
do not know
and
who shall help me

say
with parameters
to break them as I can’t

while I invest my energy instead
on
what I thought I had back then
and didn’t
though I keep going back to
find
and then fix everything

to break the barriers
as bars
not with energy
deserved
but
with the strength shared me

resources to
freedom

by grace that
is
the merit going
graciously
unasked

yet
to be caught
and looped
and unbelieving and still
asking

too often without listening

of
who shall help with the problems
I can’t
breathe through

who shall help me more than
I know how to ask
then
so by asking
once
in forever

though there are the stories
delivered
by
Reverend Henderson
in
sermons and who knows
what anthology from which
came
the accounts

regardless
of the people in a raft
having survived
the wreck
maybe abandoned for another
reason
and what they know
all they know is ocean all around

until
the rescuers
arrive
then tell survivors that
for temerity
or
the lack
they could have reached
down and
drunk at anytime
for they were in the great
releasing of fresh water by the unseen
Amazon

too far the given land
on either side
to spy

or of the woman who had won
a trip
a cruise
(that
did not wreck)
and she was poor
and so ate crackers in her stateroom
for her meals
until
one day the captain should find her
to say
the meals were included in the prize

you should have been dining at
my table
every night

sufficiency
and then amazed abundance
without
question of deserving

to drink fresh water
to
dine with the captain
of the sound
ship
questing all the time

so try
but do not condemn oneself for merit
not canceled but
fulfilled
by grace
that
reminds us
even takes us to salvation

so that the last thing we might worry
over
might be perfection

or to have lost everything by
failing
when like water
like
the feast close by
before us

are set

yes
there is a judgment

and each time for each one
a mercy

clc


(Reverend Henderson was the preacher whose messages I received in church while I was a child)

photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash