Pounding breathless life floods my heart

Dreams whisper their fiery zeal into my soul

I leap recklessly towards them. Victoriously and ridiculously alive.

But all too late I realize I am Icarus

My dreams were merely wax

I cried for God to guide me

He melted my wings.

I shriek, “This is love!” As I plummet back towards earth.

Disillusioned and broken, my body pierced by reality, I am prostrate.

But God gently calls

I drag my feeble form from the midst of shale, bleeding and graspy fingers flail

Starting anew, I am shorn and trembling

Stone caverns erupt into sheets of fire

Alive and melting, my heart is molten

Hope flaps about me, sodden and torn.

I stagger desperately towards the jaws of the lion so that I might be tamed.

Offering up my neck I stumble and am surrounded by the beating of wooden drums. Overwhelmed by darkness I cry holy.*

*This is a reference to Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm.