Accumulation

The headache you get when a front is rolling in,
the primitive eclipse of blinding pressure
that turns the world olive green
and makes you breathe tiny breaths
so air won’t hurt.

This accumulation
won’t be measured in inches of rain,
but in years of trust falls gone wrong
after being once young and giddy sure,
Hallmark expectant, then falling
with style, hitting the earth, again and again
and again.

I was trying to think it through. Trying to will the will
to stand at the edge of another precipice and pray
without fists clenched. Just pray. But what comes
is, “Why have you forsaken me?” Which,
of course, He hasn’t.
Still, though, I’m not the righteous man
whose prayers availeth much.
I was never good at math.

Yet, the onslaught, the onslaught, the onslaught,
the hitting the earth again and again, the headache,
the animal instinct to fight drowning. I’m tired of the shame
of weary survival.

Two baby deer in the yard. Still spotted. Gentle and new,
I wiped the tears off my cheeks and saw this young life,
a metaphor—a wink I hoped. I would find the meaning.

Took an entire breath, and then
the third fawn came. Limping. Front right paw dangling
and my ribs were molten iron. Don’t fall, baby. She’ll never
make it. My God, there’s a prayer.
Oh, Jesus. This baby has a broken foot.

I know that if someone will save her, it will have to be me,
and with my own two firstborn hands,
and this makes me angry.
Furious.

I won’t be able to catch her. I will fail. She will try to run
and be terrified, and wild, and in pain, and I will fail.
And she will still limp. And she will still fall. And she will still die.
An entire life.
I am nothing divine.

What sort of prayers are to be prayed at the end of young trust?
I believe too much to unbelieve.
I have tested too much to deconstruct.
But how it hurts to live in a world like this.
How every collision takes all your air away
as your body flattens against the ground.

And why must that little deer be broken?
How did she break her tiny foot?
Were you there, God of sparrows
when the fatal wound fell upon her?
How did You manage
to hold back your Hand?
And did you weep to see it
like I weep?

Oh God, see her little spots,
cold snow on dried clay.