Courage in the Wild

Poetry #04

Fastly secured is the soul shaken about
By storms of loss and choice and desert
The courage that appears cowered to doubt
To make real and suffer realizations

A weight to break the man in mortal tarry
All bound in time and place by that seeming
No more than a corpse and a thing to carry
Brink of slavery - friendship’s gleaming

Set a stone here, mark your step in the night
Young one – brave one, good here now 
Set not a tent, but remember that shining light
The face that wishes you well

Ships load off their cargo but man’s body, his mind
Drags history and keeps tally across present time

See the fostering of your past demands
The adoption beyond your doubts
Your anger, resentment, and frustrated plans
Altered within to face without

Provided and unchided and embraced all by
Infinite Wisdom Wise and Caring’s Eye
The soul beaten down preparing
To know You for the first time true

Without wounded pretense to presume
He thought he knew what You were to do
Wondered still at courage so resumed
In the storm, the losing, the wandering

Camille Corot, Hagar in the Wilderness (1835)

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