Meditation I
Were I to lift my eyes and gaze upon your feet
to thus deduce the earth's abuse from your
scuffed toes, to note the smear of dust and blood,
to eye the strain of veins against the bone
and then behold the spike that nails your feet,
Would I then know the weight of Love?
Yet, who am I to raise these eyes above
the blood-soaked ground, so malcontent to stay
with view of wooden beam bisecting earth;
to think that I should dare see something more
than this vast world which squirms beneath above?
Is vanity my fear of Love?
What draws my eyes to raise to shins well cut
from prongs of errant lash, to eye the scabs
upon your knees incurred from kneeling at
the post where you were tied; to dream that I
deserve to kneel before this cross coarse cut?
In kneeling did you honor Love?
Above your knees to your scored thighs where falls
the drape of borrowed cloth, with navel earned
from Mother's womb sense I that you too know
as human born the grief that is our lot?
Like us you die when death's keen sickle falls.
Your death is it the way of Love?
Yet dare I ask as vagrant eyes take rest
upon the wound where Roman lance was thrust
into your heart, from whence life's water and
life's blood do flow; to where the probing hand
of Thomas touched and put his doubt to rest,
Holds this pierced heart the truth of Love?
And now onto your nailed and open hands
I gaze, from palm to palm, the alpha and
omega, hands that seem to boldly hold
the world, yet I am driven to inquire,
this planet's hates, are they within those hands?
Does erring earth care for your Love?
Now to your face where streaks of blood run blurred
by sweat, where barbed crown jabs your scalp, where eyes
that see the secret of our souls and see
through time here gaze on me with death's void stare.
But yet you live and death defined is blurred.
Is death then but a birth to Love?
My Lord, you now before me hang the one
and holy sacrifice, through agony
you shed your blood and break for us the bread
which is your body. Hence in hope and faith
we eat of you and join in being one.
Do Faith and Hope become by Love?
© E. David