The last 6-8 weeks have been a frenetic mix of holidays, travels and missed deadlines. As I’ve labored to finish The Ravaged Realm (thank you AMG for your patience!), I’ve also sought to get my creative bearings for 2012. I’m on a bit of a mission to rejuvenate on multiple levels: spiritually, relationally, emotionally. My own personal vision quest has been structured primarily around waiting on the Lord, learning to hold steady in small faith and weak prayer, asking for a meek spirit, and drinking the Word in a way I haven’t quite been able to do/achieve/receive in quite some time. It’s been very good so far, but it has also left me thoughtful and a bit pensive in that moody, creative-person sort of way—i.e., not altogether eager to just throw more words up on the screen.

Nevertheless…I’m a writer. I throw words. Occasionally, very rarely, the words I throw form a poem, instead of story or an essay. If I were to be candid, I would say I’m a pretty good writer, but that’s a very different animal than being a good poet. The poem below is actually a few years old. I found it as I was rooting around in my hard drive, preparing to update all my gazillion old Appleworks files to Pages (so I can finally upgrade my Mac to Lion 10.7 and leave Rosetta behind). A poem titled “Nothing” seemed apropos. I hope you enjoy. If not, remember…I’m not a poet. 🙂

NOTHING

Before something
there was nothing,
just like my searching days;
Yet nothing is something,
and that’s easy to forget.
True emptiness has no strength
for a sprawling galaxy.
A bowl holds water
because the void is
a shape of open space
with boundaries,
else how should water stay fixed?
Pleiades, nebulae, our brown clay
were not flung into a mysterious
blank absence, but into the created nothing—
more than empty, less than full—
and the canvas, now painted, teemed
with trees, fish and copper,
glory and splendor,
spackling the cracks of time and space
with caulk of divine marrow.
Ere man drew breath the
skeletal stars sang, but nothing heard
until Adam awoke.

©2023 Dean Briggs Ministries

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