A Desert Cloak

I’m writing this for you
To help you know that your
Suffering is in the fabric of
Life, not a consuming moth
Nor wasting rot: it renders,
Rather, Hebrew cloth.

Your sins and your mistakes,
Deep wounds that sins of
Others make; time the thief,
Illness, grief, the loss of ones
You’ve loved, lay siege a soul
With rage, despair and fear;

And you will choke on tears
Believe joy was all illusion,
And shiver for the cloak of
Days that passed with ease,
Comfort, pride; days you believed
You could die with no regret.

I’m writing for you, son,
Because I know the threads
Of your pain will be the weft
Of desert cloth, essential stuff
In this dry place; renewed through
Years, perhaps, of wandering.

God grant that you may see
The fabric being prepared,
And, like, the person measured
For this garment of splendor,
Made to adorn a warrior-king.

Copyright 2003, Theodore T. Patterson

.    .    .  

This was written for my son during a time of difficulty.

We can't see what's coming, and so neither can we prepare for it. It seems to me that an attitude of relinquishment, an acceptance of whatever comes, a willingness to be reshaped by the hammers and chisels of life, trusting that those reshapings are somehow rendering beauty, freeing a artful form from coarse stone. Resisting the chisel, if is even possible, could result in an errant blow, a setback, and hence a new design that will nevertheless render art, if not beauty . . . or destruction. This is not an attitude of faith, merely an observation. Chisels abound, and can and do destroy the possibilities inherent in stone, e.g. Newtown. We can't see what's coming.