A Poem that didn't make it by snail mail

This is a poem that I wrote for a writing contest with the theme finding the courage to answer God's call. I mailed it in on Sunday night, but unfortunately I did not put enough postage on it so it never arrived at its intended destination. I expect it will arrive back at my house soon. I am rather disappointed in myself as the deadline for the entries was this past Thursday.


The Pearl

Words echo through a cavernous
void, “Receive the healing of God
Be healed in heart
Be healed in your emotions
Be healed in your mind AND
GET YOUR DREAM BACK!”

My dream, I have a dream?
My dream, if I have one, lies
cold and hard like a stone
at the bottom of a deep, dark well
My dream sits in a dusty attic
buried among things long abandoned
in some crumbling cardboard box
I can’t- won’t search for it
won’t gaze upon it
or examine its contours

For it is a treasure I most fear to find
Unearthing it might demand of me
my carefully hoarded treasures to be sold
in order to claim it. It would require throwing away
these images of stone and carven wood
Upon discovery I would not buy
the field in which I found it, I would bury it deeper
let the dark earth cover it

I stop up my ears because I don’t
want to hear God call me by name
Because finding my dream, hearing God’s voice,
would require finding the courage to
take a step towards the dream’s fulfillment
And then another and another
on the long, perilous journey

I need the courage to surrender myself
to unstop my ears LISTEN
open my heart OBEY
unclench my hands FORGIVE
For if I would turn he would heal me
I must open my coal-seared
lips and speak into the void,
“Here I am.
Send me.”