(There’s a garden in His voice)



A testimony is an attestation to the truth
of the matter. The matter is that I used to write lists
of things I was afraid of: one, sinking before I learned
to breathe underwater, undercurrent, inhaling
a drowning and two, my life closing
as a solitary force. Three: waiting for a person
who waits longer than guilt. Longer than
grief. Longer than doubt and death. The truth
is, I was growing wild in some harvest of patience,
not a weed who bereaves in black, but weed
as a browning reach of spider and branch,
lieu to a gardener who cultivates the living leaves
with sight and the dead flower with breath.
But I know what light is: watching it waterfall
down the windows of a building. Watching
it reflected in galaxy of iris and lash. Watching
it shine behind the barrier of lips and teeth.
But there’s more truth past the matter of a private grace.
I always wondered how beauty was so accidental,
a sun worth little more but whim and privy to rain.
I was answered by learning to see this backyard
in its entirety: how petal is to flesh, and stem
is to limb. How once a swingset meant to escape
and how now it means to be lifted. He stands above
with both light and storm, renewing me with season.
To learn to put on Christ like a sheath of silk,
means withstanding the current and tow with knees
buckled and learning to embrace the rest of the garden
with a fever that says one body one Spirit
and watching light do more than appear and reflect.
A list of fearful things becomes second to exchanging
forsaken with beloved, when the next step
is to be momentarily drowned in water the way He
was eternally drowned, then risen, in Earth.