A Poem from Pursuit 1: Diamond Dust

Diamond Dust *

Late one cold gray winter afternoon, two sundogs shone in the western sky. As I watched, my gaze became transfixed on their rich warm color against the barren background. Thoughts returned of a lost friendship. It was an untimely love which I smothered and cut off. My choice was difficult. In hindsight, it was inevitable and eternally wise. Even so, the steeled denial left a part of my heart twisted, scarred and hardened. Fifty years later, two sun dogs opened my soul to the probing, healing love of God.

Through the winter-wither gray
Two sundogs slowly glowed.
Warmth flowed through feelings far away.
Outside, the sky was cold.

Burning rays fast thawed
the sinewed bands around my heart.
Tight claws of hardness fell.
Till fires broke out
to melt my stubborn will.

Fueled by long dry feelings
from an almost forgotten day,
fierce conflagration loosed
the time-taut-clutch upon my soul.
Outside, the sky was gray.

Faster than a blown-out match
the sky alight in colors lived and died.
Oh, my fire-charred life—
dry blackened stick.
Outside, the clouds grew dark and thick.

Why did that short-lived rainbow
upon a winter’s sky
shine into my buried dark?
Expose time’s hardened scars
bound around my heart?

How could two sundog’s bite
into my winter-withered soul,
burn reopened flesh,
cauterize old pain,
cleanse memory’s faint remains?

Why did I tried to save that sky
upon the camara of my eye?
Gone it was. And gone the flame—
like hopes once lived but never named.

Gray clouds
obscured a light once shared.
Winds blew our lives apart.
Loss froze youth’s warmth within my heart.

May Holy Love,
Come, search beyond the outside gray.
Scan the skies inside my heart
And then, in trembling willingness
help me bow to God and pray.

That another pair of eyes
might scan a sundog sky today,
and pause to capture and ignite—
the warmth of God’s fresh healing rays
upon our aging winter’s gray.

* Sundogs are made by light going through the prisms of ice crystals in clouds or in the atmosphere.
When the crystals are in the atmosphere, they are called diamond dust