Passages
Photo by Valentin Müller on Unsplash
On Considering Matthew 24
A Poem by Laura McCullough
You will hear wars;
rumors of wars.
Drum beats
like raindrops on
some ancient tin,
heavy mascara
tears that stained
a good blouse, pounding
bare feet down
roads of perdition;
and worse. Silence.
See that you are not troubled.
The flutter of
a wounded bird: troubled.
Some strained and murky
middle place of curses
crushed in the
millstone and wings
to the wind like chaff.
Dogma dismantled,
hearts dismayed,
a people all together
unmade.
And yet, not the end.
Rise, rising, Risen.
Nations drowned in
derision and altars all
on salted ground. These
kingdoms, their liege
of circumstance and air,
move the border
stones and rend
the soil even
as we stand. But
deep wounds make
room for deeper
roots.
There will
be famine and quake.
All that can will shake.
To all the feasts
we may never see,
the Earth gathers
in her least, clutched
to a breast unhewn
and heaving.
Every tattered
dress and voice
gone quiet a
pebble in her
avalanche.
Only the beginning.
The burden of a feather;
help and hating tangled
up in being, weaving
lives from ashes.
Faces kiln-burnt from
the forging of our
idols.
But for His Name.
Hope. Vows
spoken and souls
unbroken, cast
against the swell.
Those gasping death and
once rolled under,
grasping now,
embrace the tide.
His blood and His water
saying follow, as
they fall from His side.
Drawing us
up and over the
biting breath of a
surface called
sanctified.
My Shadowlands
were never healed
with time,
stitches,
sutures, or
wired lines,
but His Word
closing chasms
with oil and wine;
a Blood poured
out that
wasn’t mine.
Laura R. McCullough is an artist and writer happily nestled with her family in the North Georgia mountains. A “lover of faith and believer in what is beautiful,” she and her husband work in ministry and music in their community. Laura uses her writing and mark making to explore how the music of language can express things we are unable to say. Her work has been published in journals such as Rattle Magazine, The Blue Mountain Review, Right Angle, Solum Press, Vessels of Light, Wild Roof Journal, and The Way Back to Ourselves. Her artwork is featured in several regional museums and galleries.
