Shunned At A Funeral — Nothing Left To Defend

Oo heat
I met him where the road grew thin, where the trees forgot
Their names.
He carried dust
Like history and spoke like
Time had waved.
He asked me if
I'd walk
With him and singing past where
The markers fade.
He said the way was
Long and wild and would not leave me unchanged.
He said the night would burn my face,
The cost would not be small.
He said the road might take my breath
Before it gave me dawn.
He said, "If you
WOULD COME WITH ME, what would you
Choose to bear?"
I said, "Then let me
Take the courage that mary
Wore in fear."
When heaven
Pressed against her life and called her
Future near, let me carry
Ruth's
Devotion that stayed when it could be
The faith that clown to empty hands and learned what home could be.
I said that give me perhaps
Courage thread held tight
That rest her very breath
Against the coming night.
Take the tears of
Rama the grief that
Would not sleep
That learn to cry aloud for children
Buried deep.
He said you know the road
Ahead will ask you what you are
So let me
Take the psalms of
David, the songs he sang undone, when
Kings were made of breaking bones and mercy had not come.
And give me
Job's
Defiant breath that spoke without relief.
The voice that named the darkness real
And still
Refused defeat.
He stopped and let the silence speak
Between the woods and sky.
He said, "You
Cannot carry all that you would like to try."
And then
I saw the truth laid bare
Like footprints in the sand.
No
Borrowed strength, no second skin could
Help me where
I stand.
So
I laid down the borrowed stories, the courage, grief, and flame, and said, "If
I must walk this road
I'll walk it in one name.
I don't need all the faith of saints or borrowed bravery
I don't need the tears of history to carry me through the sea.
If
This road will cost me everything, if it
Strips me down to ash and bone, then all
I need to walk it through is the blood
That calls me."
He nodded once AND TURNED TO
WALK the forest made away.
And every step I TOOK FROM THERE.
LEARNED
Why the night gives away.
I didn't know
Where dawn would fall or how the road
Would bend.
But
I had nothing
Left to prove
And nothing left to defend.
Heat