Torn loose, they lie like driftwood.

In tangled heaps of tattered clothing,

Wrapped in clammy castoff blankets,

A thin barrier against the pavement’s cold embrace.

Rootless, castaways

Some bent double in doorways,

As though bowed in worship to the drug that holds them captive,

Mangled in addiction’s pitiless grasp.

Seeking fleeting moments of euphoria

Or,

Pushing pilfered shopping carts,

Salvaged possessions heaped high,

Weathered care-lined faces, and weary eyes

Looking for their next meal,

Swept along like the windblown debris,

Of crumpled paper coffee cups and fast-food wrappers

Gathering in the storm drains,

Bits of castoff clothing marking their passage,

Like storm-blown seaweed stranded on the shore.

 

They accumulate in doorways and alleyways.

 

What winds have blown these battered human heaps,

Upon this cluttered concrete shoreline?

Were they once rooted in fine, fertile soil,

With homes and loved ones gathered close,

Or,

Did their roots find no purchase on the barren rock of existence,

To grip with a faltering, feeble grasp

Until some terrible tide sent them swirling into the abyss,

Adrift and abandoned to the cruelties of the elements,

And left as prey to, pimps, pushers, and thugs,

Or,

Was there some defect in their birth,

That left them vulnerable, stumbling into the streets,

Where they stand,

And beg,

To feed the gnawing hunger of addiction,

That devours them, body, mind, and soul,

Or,

The empty aching belly that screams for more than empty calories

To fortify them against the night's frigid fingers.

 

Polished by the wind and waves of circumstance and adversity

With souls stripped bare by need and want,

They seek solace together,

A tangled human mass,

A jumbled windrow of broken hearts and shattered dreams,

A fellowship of suffering, cluttering the curbs,

Who share their meagre funds.

 

And God looks down and weeps,

At the driftwood on the concrete beach.

Their souls were made for more than this.

The image that they bear is His.

Alone upon the lofty ledge,

The vast abyss before you.

Your courage quails your blood grows thin,

Your trembling hands grow weak.

Your mouth is dry, your lips are chapped.

Your quivering voice can’t speak.

You can’t retrace the journey back,

That brought you to this place.

But can you trust the wings you wear,

To bear you down and safe?

 

One final footstep risks it all.

 

It’s here the faithful take their plunge.

It’s here the fearful freeze.

It’s here the faithful make their mark upon the airy breeze.

It’s here the fearful cling and shake upon their watery knees.

 

But if you trust the Holy One,

Who led you to this place,

You’ll boldly step on nothingness,

Out into empty space.

 

You lean into the abyss,

Gripping your courage tightly with both hands,

 

The wild wind roars and moans and wails its screeches long and sharp.

You carve it like a blade of steel.

It must give way and part.

Your pinions thrum through viscous air and match your pounding heart.

 

You tame the air, you bend the wind, conform it to your will.

Its sweet caress upon your wings,

You soar on down until,

You see below you,

Far below,

The ledge from which you fell.

​There is a hill that I have seen, in childhood,

Through the window of my dreams.

It is a secret, sacred place,

Unreal and yet existing.

 

A mystery, hidden by a veil,

Too hallowed for a human tread.

And I have longed to run there,

To place my naked feet upon the emerald incline,

Find a foothold, climb its sylvan slope,

And solve the secret of its certainty,

To gain the loaf-shaped, sunlit summit,

Eternally dominant in the valley of my childhood dreams.

 

Tonight the hill appeared again,

Unsummoned,

And unseen for decades.

I had forgotten its eminence in my nocturnal visions.

Nearer tonight than in memory,

But still beyond reach.

 

An arbutus flourishes near its summit.

A solitary sentinel with roots embraced by stone.

A sight, I had not seen in decades past.

And with it on the slanting crest a structure stands,

White, bright and lustrous on the sunlit slope,

Drawing my starveling spirit to its doorway.

 

Tonight I comprehend.

 

And oh, tonight was special.

Tonight the hill drew near.

It called me by my secret name.

It whispered in my sleeping ear.

And I shall go there someday,

For some day’s almost here...

The rapier wind slashes pregnant clouds.

They burst open

Birthing silver droplets

That fall,

Battered by the wind.

 

Its bellicose touch.

Hurls its tiny victims,

Through the leaves of the maples

Like liquid silver daggers,

To shatter against the earth,

Until they run, thick as blood along the curb.

Tail lights reflect and redden the flood.

 

Dawn arrives to witness

Streets strewn with branches,

Soaked and sodden litter,

Heaped in silent streets,

An aftermath of upheaval.

Fragile stems stripped away.

Only the strongest survive

And cling tenaciously to life.

 

The midnight of our souls has passed.

Our hearts still beat within our chests.

Our lungs still breathe the viscous air.

And in our minds the tempest is a shadowed memory.

 

We are truncated but transformed.

 

We rise,

Pared and peeled.

Only our essence remains.

We shine,

Polished by the maelstrom,

Pruned and perfected.

We wept once,

Gushing gales of tears,

Grieving uncountable losses.

We sing now,

And hail the open heavens

Arms raised in rapture.

We welcome,

Sunlight that reveals our mercurial quintessence.

Our spirits radiant,

We stand,

Side by side,

Tested and tempered through affliction,

Altered, clean and potent,

Quivering and lustrous as quicksilver,

Each entranced by the other’s beauty.