Category Archives: poetry

Too Many

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Day 16’s prompt is Too Many. I play around a bit with the meaning.

Too many”
As in there is “also much”
And sometimes there are also “few”
Of which it might be said there are too.

But who
Could say that there are too many
Things to be thankful for?
Too many blessings you’ve let walk through the door?
Too many people who love you, people galore?
Too many that you couldn’t use more?

You are not alone because there are too,
Many people longing for a place like you,
Too many people living afraid that there are too few
Who have room for another friend and who
Don’t have the faith to stick with it through
Thick and thin and to do so with you.

If you think you’re alone, you are not
Cause I am one and we are two,
And there are many more of us too.

© Randall Edwards 2021.

Pass the Piece Discussion

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My wife, Jennifer, and I had a lovely discussion with artist Dawn Waters Baker about our Pass the Piece collaborative art project sponsored by Rabbit Room.

Through a Window

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Today’s November Poem a Day prompt is “Window.” In recognition of World Diabetes Day, here his one is in honor of my hero.

Peak through a window
Into the life of my hero,
Who, since the age of seven,
Has had a cellular thirst,
Who has stuck her fingers
So many times
That her fingertips can bleed 
With just a squeeze.

Peak through this window.
What do you see?
I’ll tell you, she
Is one on whom the smile
Has remained
In spite of it all
To this very day.

© Randall Edwards 2021

Say It

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The Lord has given you something to say.
Say it. 
That is why He made you—
You and not someone else.
So come to your room. Sit at your desk.
Address the page,
And as you do,
Pray it.
Do not let the censoring voice silence you.
Speak, write of delight; tell your story.
Strain your eyes; fix your mind;
Open your heart to the Glory
That fills everything. 
Hear the music
And sing. 
OR if the page is blank,
And fear follows hard, and you run
Into the cave, dingy and dank,
Stretch out your hand
And with your finger and thumb
Find the gold thread 
And follow.
Listen, He has not left you for dead.
Pour out the sadness, confess the badness
Full and free. Let it go. Shrieve.
And receive the blessing
Then tell.
Tell the truth. That is all you can do.
And wait. Wait again on the hunger
Or wonder to open the door, 
To show you there’s more.
Then come to the room,
Sit at your desk,
Take up your pen,
And say it.

© Randall Edwards 2021

Pet Poem: Leviathan

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The prompt for today’s, November Poem a Day Challenge is “a pet poem.”

I’ve been working through the book of Job, and this passage caught my attention. In the Lord’s final words to Job, the Lord addresses the monsters of the world which Job has faced. These monsters are imagined and embodied in the figures of Behemoth and Leviathan. The Lord shows to Job something of his own purposes for the two. After Eric Ortland’s commentary, Piercing Leviathan, only such a revelation, I think, would warrant Job’s response when he speaks of those things “too wonderful for me, which I did not understand” (Job 42:3).

Job 41:1-5 reads,

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
	or press down his tongue with a cord?
Can you put a rope in his nose
	or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Will he make many pleas to you?
	Will he speak to you soft words?
Will he make a covenant with you
	to take him for your servant forever?
Will you play with him as with a bird,
	or will you put him on a leash for your girls?"

It is a striking picture. The Lord promises to subdue Leviathan and to make him no more harmless than a house pet. And so, Leviathan is the subject of my pet. You may listen to me read the poem via the player below.

A Pet Poem: Leviathan
Tied like bait and fastened to a tree
He descended, cast himself to the depths
Of this world’s chaos and calamity,
Sank ‘neath its waves and breathed his last breath.

Swallowed by the gaping mouth of death, 
In the dark of its belly he lay
Until the barbed hook of justice set
On the morning of the third day.

Holding his rope in the beast's jaw fixed fast,
The one who was drowned, went down, arose!
Bursting death’s belly, the scorned and outcast
Led Leviathan out by the nose.

In our loving, Redeemer’s victory, 
The fears we fear, the terrors and threats
Are of no more concern for you and me
Than a bird a young boy might get.
And Leviathan, that dragon of death,
Is led for your girls on a leash like a pet.

© Randall Edwards 2021.

The artwork is available via Wikimedia Commons which notes that the image is, God fishing Leviathan, using Jesus Christ’s human nature as bait. Jesus is depicted crucified, at the bottom of a w:Jesse Tree. Miniature from Hortus deliciarum. between 1167 and 1185. w:Herrad of Landsberg. I think it’s pretty cool that the metaphor and imagery which I imagined was captured 800 years earlier at least by a 12th Century Abbess. Hope I get to meet her someday.