waiting to live

This is a story about a child

With a heart too big for his slender frame

And too gentle

To last in this wicked world.

This is a story about a boy

Who was made very tired by loving,

And waged a decades long war against 

The pressures turning his heart to stone.

This is a story about a boy

Who saw countless tired souls 

And wept. 

For he suffered their pain as his own.

This is a story about a boy

Who took those tired souls 

And stoked them till they shone like new,

Time and time again and still–

You can find him anywhere.

Perhaps he will find you.

But why? Not for gratitude,

Not for the expectation of reward.

But for faith,

A faith tied to no religion, no man, and no state.

A faith that thrives in life itself,

The resistance, the fight, the weight.

The freedom of a burden shared:

We all love, we all lose, we all suffer,

And yet we glow with the same light–

This wisdom which was always known.

That same boy, now a man

With the same heart of kindness

And the rough gentleness of a farmers hands 

Tends the seeds of love he has sewn.

Beyond the horizon of his life he saw:

Together all of us will rise

On the breeze in some distant land,

As the cottonwood seeds

Or the spores of calvatia

In the pale morning sun,

Shimmering like the stars 

And as numerous–

With reverence, adapted from Walter Wangerin Jr’s “The Ragman”