Lying In Pieces
By John Herlihy

Unimaginable,
Unendurable,
Unfathomable,
Unreachable,
Unashamed and free.
Your love enters me,
Your love is so savage,
Your love is oh so wild.
I can only feel ravaged,
On mountain peaks piled.

Once but mud and water,
Then lovingly turned to clay.
I mimic your beloved voice,
As I fall on my knees to pray,
Only to rise up and rejoice,
Once but a pencil sketch,
From thin tracings drawn,
Now a completed image.
First asked, then warned,
Now I seek only Your Visage.

First you give me a body, my life;
Then you give me a soul, my light.
When I left my childhood behind,
I became a person of another kind.
I offered up my heart lying in pieces,
On a blind journey until life ceases.
I put my true self behind my scars,
Wrapped in hiding behind prison bars.
As hollow as a drum in its starkness,
As dark as desolation in its darkness.

Until finally a new day did arrive,
When I felt the desire to survive.
The feeling began as a single ember,
A smoldering ember turned to flame.
The flame inflated into a raging fire,
That then turned into a blinding light.
Whereas once I was in small pieces,
Multiple fragments now became whole,
A circle in the square finally releases,
What I call the ultimate beauty of soul.