In Honor of Winter

Here’s hoping the winter will soon go away.  I should be thankful though, Baltimore winters are not so bad as Calgary ones which is where I wrote this…

Biting wind
Sweeps my gaze to my feet
Shoulders hunched
I feel frightened
That I am going to turn into
A frozen wife of Lot
Covered in white
Found later in mid-stride

Around July.

Dorian Gray

If you haven’t read the book The Picture of Dorian Gray, I recommend it! Oscar Wilde probably wouldn’t approve of this poem, but I couldn’t help but see the analogy.  I believe there is truth in most forms of art –  nothing is secular.

Our horror of our own sin
Wanting it to reflect on nothing
Reputation’s purity hides
the sinister portrait of Dorian Gray
If we stab the evidence, we’ll kill ourselves
We realize our own wickedness
would become our death.
I hide in opium smoke
disguising the fact that
my dress is dingy,
Yet Christ is my portrait
Taking my soul’s sins upon Himself
quickly aging on the cross
grotesque disease upon His soul
The Father turns away in sad disgust

In wonder and fear,
The words I hear:
“It is finished”.

In sacrifice’s forgiveness, my soul reflects His.

While my desire has been to hide the evidence,
His is to rid the evidence.
Graced with final youthfulness,
In His death,
I live forever.