Jesse Koepke

This is a poem I wrote back in July, during the Silent Months. When my words felt like nothing. Like dust.

—

I try to write / but no words come. / I can see the end, / the goal of the trip, / but the path eludes me. / I write, but don’t feel; / I dream, but don’t see.

My dreams are immaterial / and I feel like a farmer / with a dull plow, / vainly, / tiredly, / perhaps naively, / pushing ahead.

Will you grease my wheels, Lord? / You said the oil would flow. / Here’s my broken jar, / my cracked cistern. / It’s not much to work with, I know, / but I love the words, I really do. / They just don’t flow like they should.

So touch my hands, Lord. / Breathe on my words / as you breathed on Adam. / Breathe life into these / words of dust, / that they may live. / That I may write. / That I may live.

—

Broken jar, cracked cistern. My words feel like these things. God is God, after all; nothing I bring could add to his beauty. Nothing I make will actually, in all reality look that good magneted on the fridge next to the universe.

But that’s okay. It’s okay, because I love making things, and he loves receiving them. It makes him so happy to receive what I am so happy to give.

So I bring my broken jars. “Fill them with your Spirit, Daddy,” I ask, because I know it’s what he loves to do.