Faith for these times

Here is a poem I wrote several years ago. I have always enjoyed the rhyme in this poem because I seldom rely on rhyme as much as I have here. I was steeped in Irish poetry when I wrote this. The green grass that has erupted on our lawns this past week brings hope, and when I feel hope, I always realize the cradling hands of faith. These are religious words that have been misused and sometimes overused to the point that we often ask ourselves in our most challenging moments: What do they really mean? What does it mean to have faith? Sometimes I write poetry to try to explain that to myself and for myself.

It is a beautiful nourishment to see neighbors, friends, and even strangers act in faith.

 

Faith

 

God loves those who hang by a thread

over fallen lights, whose grip on the slim

of the unknown is a slice, who hang on,

but do not have words for it. God sees

the articulation of that resolute silence,

that beautiful thing, as a drop on a sliver

of green, just eyes averting to the blue upward,

just a heave of nothing but the upturn of a lip

that can’t sing. God listens anyway

though no one else does to the rhythm of a dangling

silk on the sleeve of a dream and He calls that

a faith, the faith of a seed in a famine of noise,

a posture of white knuckled, no-matter-what

holding on–tendering abandonment to soft string.

 

 

-Kerri Vinson Snell