Thistledown
I sometimes find a wish is floating
through my mind like gauzy thistledown:
If only this could be my last load of garbage,
my final cleaning up of litter — though still
keeping cats and kids and other treasures.
Oh foolish heart! Those common deeds are
building piers that keep the harbour I call home
a safety place for sailing in the tides of life.
They give me space and time to fire creative
arrows, to watch with wonder at a glowing sky.
Yet I am just a vessel made of clay[1]
as is the driver of the garbage truck,
the food deliverer, the office typist, and also as
the school child chants, the tinker-tailor-
soldier-sailor-doctor-lawyer-beggerman-thief.
Of different design and pattern, various
in shape and colour, height and glaze,
each has a place within the human sea,
but, often spoiled, none last forever.
I blow the gossamer away, softly,
remembering the craftsman-artist who spoke
the word within the potter’s wheel, who fired
the kiln in the beginning. Superlative designer,
He fashions marred vessels into new, to rise
at last perfected, like thistledown.
Notes & References:
[1] Romans 9:21. See also 2 Cor. 4:7, Jeremiah 18.
New Zealand born Mary Trim, who writes as Marye Trim, has a PhD in English Literature (Loughborough, UK, 1998) and studied journalism at the University of Queensland, Australia. She has authored five published books and hundreds of inspirational articles, stories and poems and was a newspaper columnist for nine years, while also working as missionary teacher in India and Thailand. She feels called to writing ministry and sees herself as akin to those “Out of Zebulon, they who handle the pen of the writer” (Judges 5:14).
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