National Poetry Month--Day 17-- Free Verse Poem--Faceless

 

I got this picture for Christmas. While it is beautifully done, and I enjoy it, it profoundly bothers me. In fact, all pictures of this sort bother me as I feel it reduces a person to their surface details, while ignoring the deeper qualities reflected in a person's face. With Christ, that problem is magnified a hundred fold.

 FACELESS

Why

Would I know You

By everything You

Are not?

You were never

About clothes or hair

Surface detritus

Nothingnesses

They do not matter to You, 

Those details lost in other

Importances

 

You are all about

Depth-less, Boundless, Eternal Eyes

Full of Eternity 

Lit with the Light of your Creations

Awash with All the Love

All the Caring,

All the Infinite Longing

To see your younger sibs once more

Crowded around you,

Filling your arms

Clambering to be close.

 

You are those eyes

Full of infinite sadness 

And hope

For the Lost,

Those who, 

Cut and bleeding, forge their own path

Through broken glass

And broken hearts

Feeling forsaken, but not,

The takers,

Their own lives chasing

Will-o-the-wisps 

Of power

Who think they Know,

But do not care

Those who may never turn their gaze

Back to You.

 

You are those ears

That hear us calling out to You

In the night,

Offering our fears

For You to allay. 

You hear our agonies 

In the small hours

Beseeching, begging

Clambering for blessings

Answers

We rarely earn or heed,

But still beg of You.

You are those Eyes

Which See each of us,

Full of light,

Lantern-bearer

Seeker of the recalcitrant, 

The stubborn

Those who think we are our own, 

The mistaken, the clueless,

Finding us out in the stickers and rocks

Leading us back

To the safety of Fold,

Our little faces raised in Trust, 

But still distractable. 

You are there to guide

In perfect patience.

 

Yours are those lips which,

Utterly Guile-less,

Say the words we must hear.

You whisper of enduring,

Of doing and finding

Of serving, and growing

And realizing.

 

You speak

The Comfort we crave

Those magic-seeming,

So simple,

Difficult Words

That show us how to

Pick our way

Back Home. 

 

You are Your all-engulfing arms

Those havens from darkness

Those deceptively strong 

Pillars of strength

That hold us to Your 

Limitless Heart

That remind us we are Loved

With such billowing, blazing, 

Boundless Love

That we can never comprehend it all.

You are those Eyes.

©2022 by H. Linn Murphy