What Comes This Way

a poem from April, 2000

What comes this way
is not given without pain
It is not given without
hard breathing and sweat
or a good swat on the head

What comes this way
bends until vertigo sets in
with night fevers and dreams
that awaken you in screams
and tremors and self-blames

What comes this way
costs more than your right arm
or all you could pinch
in a lifetime of flinching
or the jewel passed down

from great-grandmaman's dowry
or handwoven silk wound
round the world ten times
or the sunken wreck of
a pirate's laden ship

What comes this way
is always hungry and
tugs at your belly and
growls its demands until
you just can't stand it

What comes this way
is more illness than the
black plague visited upon us
every child, woman and man
carried away her slave

What comes this way
is never a bandage but rather
an opener for all your wounds
until you've bled to death and
stand white as the sands

What comes this way
even if you haven't asked
even if you hide yourself
in a deep mountain chasm
she will find you still

and you will have to ask then
you'll be made to demand
forgiveness for every major
or minor or unconscious sin
you have laden her with

For what comes this way
is brief and hard and
so full of longing that
even kings fall to the floor
in her terrible presence

She knows your heart
She knows every song your
tongue has sung and every
wish you've listed and
she's waiting to give you

that one last fell blow
to break your ego, to claim
your soul as her own
to remake you, reshape you
into almighty God

For what comes this way
may not be very pleasing
but for the power of the
chord, you must be
reborn a flaming word