This I can only describe as something special. Glory to God!

Dove

Again I have come, wet-winged and weary,

Heart hammering, hunger gnawing me to namelessness,

As the sun sinks to ashes in the west,

My flight furtive and fleet

Over the wide and water-ravaged wastes.

The ground grieved, Beloved, where I passed,

And did not welcome me as it had before,

Though there was plenty of work for the raven, flying this way and that,

Fatly feeding on the end of all things,

Never seeming satisfied to stillness,

His foraging a fruitful feast I could not share.

I failed, of course, the first time you freed me,

Roving restless and lost as the billows rolled beneath me,

Finding nothing firm on which to set my foot,

And so I let You lift me from the lonely sky,

Stroking my feathers to finished fineness

And sending me again to seek some truth

Beyond the bitter waters of the world.

And now I have it, barely grasped,

Bent and broken, bruised, I know,

But living still beyond all hope,

Though all seems sunk in sorrow’s surge

And the raven gluts his gorge on all his eye surveys.

Oh, lift from me this olive leaf,

Its edges torn and yet still green,

And bless its brokenness with blossoming,

That I may bear its fullness, swift and sure,

To where I may finally fold my now-bright wings,

Singing this precious proof of Paradise,

My voice your voice’s vessel

As the new day begins!

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