Parousia – a poem by Howard S. Carman, Jr.

Parousia

Yet it was you who took me from the womb; 
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
—Psalm 22:9

You formed me then pushed me 
out of darkness through a narrow gate
between temple pillars—into life. 

Nuzzled between mountains,
I heard prophets beyond the peaks 
speak of you, label you distant 
and unseen, theirs alone 
to deliver. Come, they called—
We will show you the way. 

But you, with a still, small silence
spoke inside my bones 
and marrow: find yourself—and me—
in the desert, not the prophets.

So, I descended the crag,
stone by stone, into hush of darkness, 
where I wandered and slept 
twenty-seven years.

You shook me awake 
with a mighty earthquake. 
Crazed with thirst, I wandered 
and searched until fatigue 
sat me in a shittah’s thin mercy.

Sparrows arrived—tiny witnesses—
and perched above me. 
You whispered through their wings:
Stop searching—I never lost you. 

Howard S. Carman, Jr., Ph.D., is a retired physical chemist in Blountville, TN, USA. He published his first poetry collection, But Now I See: Rhymes and Reflections in 2017. Recent poetry appears in Tennessee Voices Anthology, Black Moon Magazine, Abyss & Apex, Braided Way Magazine, and Troublesome Rising Digital Anthology. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poetry Society of Tennessee and is an editor of Tennessee Voices Anthology.