o sleeper

a poem for you

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o sleeper

Ephesians 5:13-14

It was when my fingers froze together
around the hope I thought I owned,
when I saw the distant fires entangled

in the barren branches, when I pressed up
against the heaving side of the winter sky
and laid my cheek along the fresh-fall breast

of snow, when I let the last leaf fall from me,
vivid as a final garment sliding free, blushing
anew at winter’s kiss. Then, when I counted

the gleaming trophies on Orion’s belt. Then,
when I breathed my last breath and saw the
fading wisp of it rise, my soul, into the night.

It was then they carried the flame I could not bear,
a fragment of the coming Dawn, the herald
of a mighty Name. I let the fire of pressing forward

flicker out, and fell like a seed into the arms of the One
I wished to own, passing away. An old man dies
on the eve of winter, to awaken at the Word.

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

(Ephesians 5:13-14)

This poem originally appears in Solace: Poems for the Broken Season.

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