Above the Roof's Ridge
A meditative poem about looking up.
Above the Roof's Ridge
Above the roof’s ridge
of the house across
the street,
dazzling clouds—
a new and never again
formation seen by
my coincidental gaze
and the few dozen others
who looked.
I know they are
in motion, but they
seem to linger
in the setting sun.
I know they are
heavy, but their
lightness lifts me.
I don’t know why
I looked up,
why I sat at
the red table,
which shakes with
every pen stroke.
I don’t know why
my eyes become
heavy from the
incompleteness
of life—
and my desire for
completeness,
which is God
and God is
playing with clouds—
I hate to interrupt.
But I know
I’m here.
Is there anything
more important?
If you are new to Sunday Poems, I mostly write poems in conversation with biblical passages, but on occasion, I’ll write a devotional poem that I feel is worth sharing.
I know a lot is going on in the world. There is so much to do. I found myself today in a fog of acceleration—the worst pace for writing!
Luckily, God per the clouds, reminded me that sometimes the only thing that really matters is existing. If we do exist (which I’m pretty sure we do, as did Descartes), it’s worth taking note of every once in a while. Existing, reflecting, pausing, meditating is a moment when “we make room for God so that he may speak the first and last word about us, and then receiving that word, whatever it may be, for all eternity.”1
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon On Psalm 62,