Genesis 1:5

You wake at five in the morning, to a black stillness
and lay still as silence in the bed, listening
as slowly, one bird, then another,
then a choir begin to sing.

You resist waking, but it is inevitable,
this new day, a day full of loneliness and yet
another new beginning, another looking
in the mirror over your iron bed

and wondering why you are here, why
what you were was not enough that you had to be sent
to this wilderness to wander blindly
for so long.

But too often, for your taste at least,
that is his way. Creation seems to need
it’s breaking down before the pieces can be rearranged,
and so, there is always, it seems,

a time of confusion.
You can leave in anger, or flee in fear.
You can struggle in an epic desire to understand,
or

you can simply wait him out,
trusting that no matter how bazaar the path,
the end holds something
magnificent.

About this poem

Genesis 1:5 reads “And the evening and the morning were the first day.”   What always strikes me about the creation story is that God created out of chaos. And so when I feel my life is in chaos, I remember that, and hold on to the fact that God is creating something in me, and for me, whether I can see it, or not.

The painting above is one I finished this week, titled “The Big City.”  But for those who are not fans of abstract art, it could probably just as easily be entitled “Chaos”, so it seemed to fit the poem……

Tom