Of Ebb and Flow (and Grace Whereby We Go)

 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands.

Psalm 102: 25

I wait and watch before my eyes

Methinks the night grows thin and gray

I wait and watch the eastern skies

To see the golden spears uprise

Beneath the oriflamme of day…

(from The Waiting by John Leafgreen Whittier)

The sky shrugs off its diamond cloth, then satin scarf of blush and gold

It dons the hue of blue on blue; time’s shades of grace and getting old

Where Dreamer dares to take a bow and stare with lover’s eyes toward

A place that stays the same somehow; where hope and hunger’s vault is stored

The doer brushes dirt from knees with hands scored with the war of years

Knowing how soon dawn’s newness turns to noon then dusk, then disappears

As fight twixt wrong and right and faith and fear and want and need

Delivers from the womb of night the Light and love of God to lead

…lest in our haste of touch and taste we overlook what matters most

How bread we break and plan we make on living’s daily Must we host

Is but the Thoroughfare to where we meet the Giver face to face

Aha, then we should kneel in prayer and grasp His Lifeline for this race/chase

The sky shrugs off its cloth of diamond studs and blush and gold

We shrug off blankets; touch down toes/trust upon dawn’s dew-on-dust threshold

Where everyone is growing older in time’s gold-blue ebb and flow

And nothing stays the same it seems, except God’s grace whereby we go

© Janet Martin

...and here is the whole GORGEOUS poem,

The Waiting by John Leafgreen Whittier 

(...the last line, and good but wished, with God is done)