Gratitude

Winter rose by Beren Hartless

 

No passing gesture this – the healing work.

Limp step, destroyed digits, pallid lesions,

And the hidden nerve infractions

Riddled with the mindless germ

That lives to kill and die,

Were drenched in unimaginable power.

 

The hidden beauty of the man

Lay open to the eyes of One who sees all things

And makes them new.

 

B. I. Hartless

Luke 17

               Tenebrae

B. Hartless

Shades, shadows of the night,

All the dark creeping things shiver out

From the dank spaces of their secret lives

And whisper in the glooming,

Seeking prey, savage, shrunken gripped.

Dry ground, and gravel shredding skin

Watered by the tears of torment,

And by blood-like sweat,

Not of hard exertion,

But intensity of prayer.

Letting go, acceptance,

Stings and bites the soul.

Only a single candle waits awake,

While death’s cup fills.

B.I. Hartless

Holy week 2020

THE HEALING: REVISION

 

Grace’s laser welds the broken retina:

Light, form and texture

Traverse neuronic networks,

Excite synaptic leaps,

And make electrical connections,

Switching off the dark.

Nicholas Poussin

A simple touch

Recreates a complex

Interweaving web

Of physiology.

All the original potential,

Once marginalised,

Is finally fulfilled,

As the man sees

God.

B. I. Hartless