I never took a towel with fear
To dip in bowls of strain,
So why do these afflict me when
I play my song again?

Am I a greater person than
The Servant was who lived?
Are these who sit before me
More in worth than those he loved?

Why is my task so different?
Can my few moments be
Profounder work than all performed
By those who bent a knee?

And is this work so vital
That I can't afford to err?
Did any thought at all like this
One moment strike him there?

I wish it all were different!
I wish I always found
I'd met somebody's certain need
When playing certain sounds.

I wish that when I labored
Someone else's life improved.
Instead I fear each hour played
Is one for self I've lived.

And if not, why not?
Can perfected pitches heal a soul?
And if so, how can I
Bind private efforts to this goal?

Is playing truly service?
Doesn't every nerve reveal
My selfish goals?  If giving's
All I want, what's this I feel?

The world's got scores of other tasks
Without this endless dread,
The ones—quite naturally—
Which leave my brother clothed and fed.

So why go back to start
An inward fight without an end—
And with such meager impact
For the toils that I would spend?

But maybe—here is something—
This dilemma is my cross:
To meet, as yet, an unseen need
By counting all things loss;

To labor all my life to learn
To dip a foolish towel
In basins filled with weakness
While I feel a critic scowl.

At noon I left the vineyard
With a wineskin newly full
But soon a half libation lost
While running down the hill.

But though I longed to share a taste
With some fair passerby,
I stumbled, and the last drops dyed
The ground beneath a tree.

Athirst and lonely, all my dreams
Of feasts and love resigned,
When suddenly the ground broke forth
And upward rose a vine.

At last I raised my trembling hands
And plucked its yield in haste,
And found the fruit that I expressed
Surpassed the last in taste.

And so I left my garden tomb
And—drunken with delight—
I sang that Love would be my portion
'Ere I reached the night!

I do not write,
I only play;
God will resolve the dissonance
Someday.

Today's triumph,
Tomorrow's fight.
Dark longings soon will luminate
Delight.

Each hot desire,
Cold as rock,
Becomes a stair to doors I find
Unlocked.

See not to taste?
No, taste to see...
Old poison is a potion now
That frees.

When showers of fresh blessing soak my life,
Reviving savors of forgotten love,
Unveiling myriad ceaseless wonders 'round
In which like unseen air I daily move;

When I then stretch my narrow mind behind
Where every sovereign stage did stage the next
And grace displaced self's strangling undertow
To surge me toward eternally fixed shores;

When stories all around reveal the web
Of other lives weaved in a master plan,
Composed of strands which singly sing with life,
Yet strengthen all the others where they touch;

And when my straining gaze lights on the Light
Of Life, the depthless Fountain-head, and Sea
Where skeptic souls all thirst to drown,
Its pulse the how and why for all that is;

When Joy—behind, before—assaults my view,
My song, once numbed by fear, again rings true;
Once dead, I leap to give this hour my all—
Your works all praise; I can't resist the call!

Glory in music.
Shadowless light
Slicing through purposeless night.
Weak thing, and nothing,
Vapor of sound,
Dashing doubt's heights to the ground.

Glory in people.
Images worn
Mirrors of heaven when born.
Falling as flowers,
Brief joys to give,
Dying to rejuvine love.

Glory in story.
Star-points of grace
Spreading through temporal space.
Clouded as sapphire
Black-streaked with pain,
Flashing out mercy again.

Hear now the glory?
Singing sublime
Flowing through saints in their time?
Now legions drown it;
Soon all will ring:
Blazing acoustic of transfigured things.

What madness, love! complains my love-sick soul.
Who, void of self, can find a void to fill?

True pain is mercy to a heart of stone;
No loss is greater than the right to always win.

A martyr merely brands as true a lifelong fight;
For fire singed each dawning day,
He died each night.

I've scanned a star-strewn sky before
With land-shapes bathed in inky white
And swept by chilling, thrilling winds--
What oft I've seen, I taste tonight!

For countless open founts would yield
A quenching draught; I'd go my way--
But from my Jewelly-arboured springs:
Joys twice-inspired! Oh, may I stay?

(For J.B.)