POETRY
When the Angels Came for Ezekiel
When the angels came for Ezekiel with whirling wind,
he could only listen, open to the rushing of wings and wheels.
The sky was thick with God, in one moment the veneer
torn away.
When the angels came for Ezekiel,
he knew God had carried him in the desert, no matter
how lost he felt he was.
And there was God in the still air of the room
where my father died, and a glow played across
his sharp cheekbones from underneath the shadows.
My dad had packed his bags earlier that day, as he knew
he was leaving soon.
He looked forward eagerly.
I ask the angels to sew
my renewed prayers into the fiery sky.
Every wing beat has a key
that unlocks us, and we seek into every cell of our life
for that joining.
It isn’t hard to see the searing feathers
in any space you lay your eyes, when the air breaks
from asking God in.
Jesus, how can you lead me
Jesus, how you can lead me to the broken and burnt trees
I once called a forest, and how you can show me to raise hope
from the wildfire ashes. I admit You created all my favorite words:
blue, owl, sunset, frog, forgiveness, regrowth—how can we
just be normal when Your complete compassion has rewritten
it all? I’ve tried to wear the sensible shoes, but with You, want
only to walk barefoot in the huge green fields outside my house,
led by Your own desire. Once the trunks were burnt and fell under,
a few hard elms edged its focus, but with the whole land open and new
shoots showing, You said to come out to play. You are wherever I go.
So I roam, and seek. It’s only seconds until our home reappears around
the corner, waiting, miracle of time and fallen earth. You make it seem simple
to want to explore. The forest grows green in sunlight, expands and holds us
in timelessness, and just think of all the elk who were shy but always there
in the trees, and I sometimes glimpsed one when the time was right. I love
how You lead me. Jesus, tumbled as the days can be, when I call you, You
answer, and when You call, I’m there. Your green forest, and all it is, holds me.
After you died, Dad
After you died, Dad, and were gone, I knelt by the dusty boxes
of your things that were the collection of leftovers from your life.
I found your Veteran of Foreign Wars hat. Binoculars. A silver cross.
Grey photos. And then a paper tucked into one of those old glittery
Christmas cards, a tree with angels. When I pulled out the letter, I was struck
by the first words of the one wrote to you, “To my brother in Christ.”
To my brother in Christ! I had just cried out to Jesus last summer
because I had to. You were gone and I didn’t know how to go on alone.
I called on Jesus to carry me, just like I had seen in that inspirational
poster on the computer in a co-worker’s office years ago, with that
“one set of footprints” poem, which meant God was carrying me through
this time completely, as that’s what I asked for and received. I didn’t know
Dad how complete you were in Christ, and of Christ, and I grieve, why did
we keep our deep beliefs so private from each other? You aimed to live as
a grounded and ethical man, as much as possible in our current society,
and your tutoring, mentoring, and encouraging, wanting to be a blessing to
all around you, showed this. Thank you for living life so broadly and unafraid.
I know, even as you have passed, we are in Christ together, a treasure better
than anything I had been searching for in your forgotten boxes.
Lynn Finger’s writings appear in 8Poems, Perhappened, Book of Matches, Fairy Piece, Drunk Monkeys, and ONE ART: a journal of poetry. Her chapbook is The Truth of Blue Horses. She was nominated for 2021 and 2022 Best of the Net Anthology. Lynn also mentors writers in prison. Her Twitter: @sweetfirefly2.
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Artwork: “Book of Ezekiel Chapter 1-1” by Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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