Only You

by Cally Declan

The soil of my heart is furrowed and plowed,

And I stand at the edge of the garden and wait.

Would that I could see this place in its fullness,

When the trees have grown tall and the roots have grown deep,

And the flowers, all in bloom, fill the air with their fragrance.

But for now, I wait.

Words tumble from my pen like a fountain,

And I try to catch them before they fall into the earth,

Try to formulate something sensible onto a page.

Yet the words in the earth sprout clumsily, each green shoot easy to trample on.

These will bear fruit. These I will keep,

For they will not return void.

And when the words cease, I scribble my pen across the page in a different way,

Trying to form faces among the lines.

To imitate the world as I see it—beautiful.

But my hand is shaky and my lines respond, and it is but a broken image of the garden I know.

In frustration, I crumple my pages of words and drawings,

And I turn once more.

My instruments lay in the corner, oft-forgotten,

And I mourn their silence, but I fear the tuneless notes,

The crooked melody.

Still, I try, and I ache for perfection,

To somehow portray this unfathomable weight of glory that cries out words of redemption even now.

So I pray for words, or art, or a song,

To somehow be birthed out of these unskilled hands.

Anything, Oh Lord, anything true,

Anything honorable, anything just,

Anything pure, lovely, commendable,

Of excellence, worthy of praise—

Oh Lord, only you.

May my heart cry out not for the work of my hands,

But for you and only you.

I have no good apart from you, and this I know, though I still seek it elsewhere.

Oh fickle heart! Turn and see thy God!

So I stand at the edge of the garden and wait,

Not for words, not for art, not for music,

Not even for the garden to be in full bloom,

But for you.

And I know that you are coming,

Yes, even that you are here.