Only the Lost Could Find It

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.
~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind” from Every Riven Thing

May I,
though sagging and gray,
perilously leaning,
be porous enough
to allow life’s gusts to
blow through me
without pushing me over
in a heap.

The wind may
fill my every crack, crevice, and defect,
causing me to sing out.

Someday, when I do shatter,
toppling over into pieces into the ground,
it will be amidst
a mosaic of praises.

same abandoned school house near Rapalje, Montana – 2012 photo by Joel DeWaard
2012 photo by Joel DeWaard
2013 photo by Joel De Waard, a few days after the school collapsed
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One thought on “Only the Lost Could Find It

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