Companion Poem
This poem, now set to music, an amazing and beautiful, seemingly an accident of perfection. Now heard thousands of times, I will leave the original alone as it is. Tell me which one of the 3 that you prefer.
#1 Companion - NEW Version
#2 Companion - Recent Revision Version
#3 Companion - Alternate Version
#4 Companion - Original Version - God's hand.
On hot Sahara sand she moves alone, barefoot on rock and broken stone, lifeless, but for swifts.
Behind her shines the monstrance of divine and this, her friend, casts blinding Grace, yet
she walks away with her shadow into days, as Mercy’s light sets on her desert rim.
She goes left, she goes right, erratic in her flight, her companion not,
but wilful is her long black shadow,
that reaches past the dunes, past the horizon and moon, past her days.
Long arms sway in the eerie shadow of the day, the setting light and afterglow,
she ever walks, seeking elsewhere,
and shows Grace her back, while chasing its shadow black. Light beckons, dark knows it not.
Her callused feet crumble, aimless she stumbles and fumbles, on uncertain sand.
Oblivious, merciless, dead reckoning to ruinous, enslaved by her shadow, absent of Grace.
Breathless, broken, and bitter, her emptiness presides over her shadow's corridor.
Swifts behave, captured by her encroaching cave, held, silent effigies in her grave.
But Grace doth rise in the other skies, and with the morning Mercy, celestial surprise.
Caught unaware by her heart she stares, at Mercy, a shower of love, the dark into daylight.
For she's struck, transfixed in Him, companion, friend. Old future cast by her shadowed past,
melts into forgiving, dissipating, forgetting, Ozymandiam dust and sand.
Apex of her luminous life, she walks to light, cool and clear, aspergillum of Mercy's mist.
She bathes in Grace, in Mercy's place, in her friend, in her companion, in her lover.
Behind her, the unseen shadowed cloak wipes away,
the dark tracks of yesterday. Redeemed and cleaned. Swifts fly away.