The Dove
Knelt beneath a wintry sky, while I whimpered, cold and wry,
Past sand swept desert, one reflective tear upon the floor—
While recalling Sinai’s war, all at once, I heard a rustling,
One burning tree’s own leaves were hissing, hissing with my sullen roar.
“'Tis wind’s soaring,” I whispered, “hissing with my sullen roar—
I will pray for something more.”
Oh, Illuminated under face of freckled night, I cite
Eden’s flaming sword—knighting promised progeny’s somber score.
The fallen leaves of solitary tree, hid away by sandy estuary,
Beginnings of man’s failing glow—glow upon the branch’s ****.
The crooked limbs silhouetted black, like sins which spanned a crore,
All that was, now nevermore.
And the darkened, dunes, displace balefully cross our ****** birthplace,
My breath’s ivory vapors, broke by sudden death’s acquired gore.
Above, amidst acacia’s rattled wings, I spy a lone aeria
“What crime is carried upon your bough; that calm wind’s soar
Has scarred the wild yard, unoccupied, as residers abhor.
Empty now, and nothing more.”
Shivering, I shift my spine, below the sallow arc afloat; mine
Own stirring forming waves of silt displaying one dreadful downpour
On the earth—suddenly, silhouetted by the crescent’s flooding,
A creature’s restless hovering, halting on its hoisted eyesore,
Ink across the darkened canopy, blacker still, and bizarre
Now, to be alone no more.
Perhaps, it is a raven’s gloomy image, graven on, brazen
In the heavens, answering my imploring of our dire lore.
Perched quiet, gawking on the gnarled, wooden bark—now is thawing,
Speckled stars blurring beryl-gold, like the convening of an early shore—
“Though you mock my morose cry, and knock upon my vacant door,
I will have faith, forevermore.”
Beginning now, the bitter chill subsiding; feeling frozen frigid eyes,
Like charcoal pearls, cosmic blotches at darkest dusk, staring at my core.
How loathsome a rookery, seedless from the threatened nest, of tendrils
Washed away by surging winds, scouring out the faithful calm—even more,
The bird who seeks to land above the sand, mocking me all the more.
With the dawning, though, I see the silver, gold; the covenant of old.
With my mourning gone, new morning kindles auric halcyon; now behold
The bird’s illuminated frosted fringe now glints with gilt, as a dove—
Washed away, by sunrise, bloom, each branch’s beaded tear with promised prism.
How loyal that final, lofty tree, whose beams now beam, and make me free;
Like an ageless summer breeze—the Son creating both dusk and dawn,
Fulfilling now, our failure, faithful with no end, forevermore.
Our assignment was to articulate a theological truth that we found while studying the Pentateuch. I chose to convey how that the even though the events of the Pentateuch are often perceived as void of God’s mercy, man’s faith in God, and promised blessings and provision, the God of the Pentateuch is the same as the God of the New Testament. The Abrahamic covenant is just as divinely orchestrated and full of the grace of God as the fulfillment of it in the new covenant through Jesus Christ. They are many allusions and other literary techniques that all reference aspects of the Pentateuch.