Dayna E. Mazzuca

Focus, Focus

Is the pressure we feel a distraction

from what the Lord would have us see?

Are we afraid to say what we’re afraid of—

tired of people making fun

of what is not fun—

needing the root to loosen, break free?

Do we long to stomp on pure and holy ground,

let the arrows fly—claim back the lost

that means so much and, no matter what has come

to pass, will always mean

so much?

Sometimes we can feel so much has been lost, even taken from us; somehow slipped from our hands when we cared so much and didn’t want to see it go. And we can give up. Despair. Settle for less. But this is not the warrior’s cry. The warrior says, “No. I will fight, on my knees. I will declare what is mine and what I have been given. I will not surrender the fight for what is lost, but might yet be gained.”

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Waves

The scent of white lilacs

on the lip of a tugboat still on the waves

catches me off-guard, reduces

the lines between

now and then

when love was too thinly

defined, and I never knew

how the romance of wild things hung

on standing still.

There are memories that come back to us when we travel between Point A and Point B and we realize life compounds, works together, takes us forward on our own steam, and the steam of itself. We are travelers making choices, but also passengers learning lessons, people pausing to breathe in the air; the scented air that resolves the things we fear by reminding us of all we hold dear; whispering – love is always near.

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What Can Be Shaken

Ideologies scatter

like pixie dust in the face of a cold North wind—

as faith grows bold, moves into a house cleansed,

reduced through sorrow that came to visit,

but could not

did not stay forever

given the power of God

and his eternal, loving nature.

There’s so much shaking going on these days. Yikes. It’s hard to know how to respond, but respond we must, even in the quiet of our own homes. As we bow down, and choose to let the Lord lead, there’s this sense that things are happening that we can’t possibly explain and why would we try, in the moment, when the greater need is probably to be still. To take stock. To hold firm. And to release the failed ideologies that have proved less than solid; to build our lives instead on the Rock; the One that cannot be shaken.

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