Places 07: Conversation

For those who like to compare revisions and see how poems grow, I’ve included several versions of Conversation. The last two are significantly better than the first, so keep reading.   

 2011, Conversation, original published in Places, 2011

 Wanting living conversation
a word lifted out into time’s tick-tock,
Into creche and crush of creation.
Human sequence,
Squeezed onto a narrow path,
Channeled between rising rock-dusts—
Silent spirals—
Churning, changing, furiously falling,
Seeking to meet His children.

2020, Conversation, version 1

When Love invaded matter,
the creche of His creation—
joy endured the crush of His own time—
Human sequence carried the divine—

Beaming on a narrow path,
through galaxies of stars
He’d tuned to sing—
Spiraling through space
to enter earth by human birth—
explosive grace,
dancing, changing, rearranging
molecules for me and you—
clothed in infant skin,
Holy mercy entered in—
God came to meet His children—

2020, Conversation, version 2 

Human flesh fused into Love.
With infant cries, creation
cuddled warm within a woman’s womb
and grew.

Is any birth not bloody?
And so, in blood, Life died
and flesh fused full to Love
and grew anew.

And Life found birth again.
Baptized by blood-bought tongues of fire,
our flesh infused with Love;
we died and grew anew.

2020, Conversation, version 3

I rewrote the second stanza into a almost new poem. Maybe, as poetry, it’s not quite as tight as 2011, but isn’t this fun?  I delight in the development, comparisons and changes. I hope you will too.

mercy entered matter—
hoping to hang out, wanting to talk,
to break some bread, fry some fish,
to laugh, sing, dance and pray,
live out Love’s forever ways.

(Oh, Yes— there’s more—but at the core
Love’s His beginning, His middle, His end.)

He Himself is Love,
The Love Whose power
called forth our earth—
He strung the spirals, sang the songs,
planned human love and human birth.

Faster than the light we see,
He races through the universe—
The stars burn dim beside His light
All power dims before His might.

He chose a narrow path—this source of Life—
That day He came to me—
He cut through galaxies
and pierced my darkened mind with sight.

Past the darkness of a young girl’s womb
through the darkness of His tomb,
He shines and shines and shines
this light of yours and mine.

All because He wants to hang out—
together—with us—
wash us up, heal our hurts, give us His Spirit
and help us get to know His Dad.

Will we let Him break our bread, pour our wine,
feed us fish, join our laughter and our tears,
take His love and humbly give Him back His own?

©Ginny Emery