Refuge

Colored Pencil | 12” X 9”
This piece is inspired by the poem, Refuge, written by John Dorsey:

Refuge
by John Dorsey

We made ourselves like doves,
nesting among the cliffs
Like the weeping prophet advised,
It was right that we run.
For Moab, and Babylon flaunted
brokenness in their chosen princes,
And the powers of the air preened, belching forth smog laced with lead, dread, doom, and death
Towers of appropriation, corruption, consumption,
manufactured incompatibility, hostility, animosity,
Toward life and our new life,
Caustic tendrils ever creeping, even into the solace of our abode, like smoke piping down into and out of the bedroom closet at 251,
Home base, a danger zone.

-selah-

Only right to go,
Like that Carpenter, another weeping prophet,
who left the crowds, their calls for attention and answers, left the accusations and avarice,
and went out to the hills to commune alone,
and to Gethsemane with a small circle, to hide his head, weep, and bleed realness before the Divine,
That same one of the dust of Palestine
Once with then-calloused, and soon-to-be star filled hands, who took retreat, and urges Ephesus back to the things done when first in love,

So slipping away among the ponies was only right
Back where first we mooned - honey - after wedding in the house of friends
Falling back into nature, and our journey thus far, and the quiet, near the ocean and the pines
To escape, the routine, and the where of so much unexpected pain and loss,
Away, like that Clapper Rail we spotted beneath the boardwalk over the marsh in the straw grasses, hidden for safety and peace.
The places sometimes chosen out of necessity and practicality for safety, can also be made beautiful
Like bringing lights and art and green life watered with tears by you, my very own weeping prophet,  into a refuge from the smoke clogged atmosphere we once had to leave behind (along with those past-midnight drives),
The smoke clawed at the seams and seals even here, trying to creep back with seven more spirits of woe
The audacity. 

Fires still burn 
Moab and Babylon industrialize and evolve.
Loss gnaws insatiably 
The retreat is not remedy complete, for the fullness of the Apocalypse of the Lamb Slain and Raised (and all things redeemed, really) is still veiled by the Fall’s most deceptive medium of all - time
But as we perceive so prominently to persist in it perpetually (at least as we process, though we know only in part)
The safe houses are welcome Havens,
Our new treehouse, where you’ve brought green to grow, and filled the dark with light, and filter out the smoke, reclaiming it for peace, and our own walks in the woods, and huddles in nests, and the words we share between us, and with our loved ones, and the Word itself, longing to shadow us in Her Wings, Mother Hen, Mother Rail, Mother God
Refills of the rx are required
And I welcome the respite of refuge with you