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.
Amethyst Review 