Havens

One of my favorite poems that I have ever written.  I like to revisit it now and then.  Though it was reworked in 2008, I believe it began in a draft much earlier than that, maybe as early as 2002 or 2003. You might recognize some places...familiar homes to me, my childhood home in Hurt, VA, Montreat, Woodcreek Road, Camp Fincastle (which no longer exists as it did), and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Places where I would go to find sanctuary.  Places I still like to go.  Where do you seek sanctuary? 

Havens

Being an only child

I would run out

Into the center of a sun-ripened plain

Flop my tiny body

Into the weeds and look

Up into a satin sky

Watching cotton balls

Detach from one another

Forming their own identities

Being distraught by a boisterous crowd

I walked down the root-veined path

The clay soiling my toenails of opal

Beside Lake Susan I found myself

Perched on a protruding stone

I saw that it was lonely and wished

To be submersed in depth, just as I

Being one who loves to stargaze

I went out into the late-night world

And searching for warmth

Reached the road and sprawled

In the middle of its stretch

I wished on falling stars

Until the tangerine sun
Burnt away the violet sheath

Being lost in my faith

Feeling out of place stirred in

With the praise band

And the over-friendly psalm reciters

Who somehow misplaced my existence

I walked out onto a rickety dock

Standing in the middle of a freezing, filthy pond,

And saw Jesus' face wink

At me through the muck

Being depressed as to why he left

I drove up the curvy parkway

Then wound back down again

Until a reached a clapboard church

Where I could overlook his valley home

Cry amongst the dead whose names I did not know

And mourn thoughts of reason

That should have brought me hope