Auditory Visions as a youth,

early morning dawn where sun greets this fiery lake,

a day (or was it, days), of skipping school leading to a barren wilderness of pre-mature philosophical truths,

while the angry earth growls beneath my feet,

I walk on in later years upon the “black ice” of the day

and rising where there remained water none and only a stifling vapor of fossil fuels reaching nostril and air.

I remember the year: it was 1980!

They say a poet writes from his suffering,

and truth stirs within me,

among the bones and dusty earth,

an atomic flash,

a state of awe,

prickly cacti and

a roadrunner nipping at every attack from the rattler.

Mile upon mile of dirt, asphalt, and dusty roads I walk,

A normal summer day in South Texas.

Hearing my head speak

The same old relinquished thoughts of sorrow, grief,

And the pain, oh! the pain,

Where liberation was no where in sight.

Acceptance and cooperation

Surely would have turned this gamut to blue skies.

I was obstinate in my vision of life eating away at my being.

Wasting away, she said, and I understood not.

And, now I do.

But, as time would have it,

Healing sank in,

Medication regimen and love

Altered the will of my own to

Something far deeper.

And still I struggled, depth upon depth,

Until one night I saw her,

Reaching out to take my hand

In the form of Christ.