CHOICE MADE SO SUDDENLY

In that one, that single split-second of his life,

He came to know that all his years of work,

All the preaching, all the endless hours

Spent giving of himself until he nearly dropped;

All of it, had been swallowed into the pit

Of choice made so suddenly

He could not even grasp or hold

The passage of it through his mind.

It came...it simply, simply came,

And he had drawn,

And he had shot,

And the sound of it reverberated

Down his spine

And through his inward parts

Like some slick of blackened oil

Spreading over all the waters

In his holy cup,

And he knew

That he had failed

Yet again,

Had made his choice of life

Over death;

And...yet...

Death enveloped him

Despite the shining of the sun

And the breath filling still his lungs.

So it is with all our tryings

To be all that we hope,

All that we think we can,

And in one inevitable split-second out of time

We find

Impossibility

Where we had truly thought

We held control ourselves.

And the finding we did not

Rises bitter gall within our mouth,

The awful taste of knowing

Our own strength has failed again

And we have opened yet another door

To the gaping maw of hell.

And in our lostness

We stumble in the dark

Of condemnation,

Engulfing at our own hands,

A net thrown over all our ways

By our own mind,

Our expectation

That this must be the way of it

And that our path is set in stones

Concreted into certainty of doom.

We dwell there endlessly

After,

Hopeless to escape

Until on some distant curve of life

All unexpectedly

Comes absolution

With its flood of breaking tears

And at last we know

The truth of it...

That it was never in our power

Or in our strength of mind

Or hand,

And condemnation,

Fed by evil lips,

Has been a blister on our soul

That only living water

Can wash away and heal,

Dissolving concreted rockiness

So our stepping stones

Can settle into pathways

Leading into life

And not to death.

By Jo Anzalone 1-19-2007

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