A New Day Poem by Jose Claassen

When the sun can rise on a man
leaving behind his sins
who finds once more that the sky is not a ceiling
but a trap door to the universe,
who feels again after many days of torment
heaven’s feathered choirs
whispering on his skin
When the dawn unfurls on a daughter
wiping from her face
the dew of nothing but life’s salty tears of joy
When this is how it starts
a day has come

When yesterday’s parodies of progress
who’d heaped their thieving curses on sanity’s hallowed halls
When jeering and mocking
and failure’s scorpion tail
give up their fight
succumbed they sink in the dust that swirls
in the wake of Hope’s tornado,
When tomorrow’s bright horizon
Is no more a figment
than the spawn of imagination
When this is the theme of beginning
a day has come

When a mind can wipe the sleep from its eye
to find that it now sees
the mountains to life’s valleys
the upturns on its downward spirals
the triumphs in times of torture,
When a tired soul’s lungs
can face the growing sphere of gold
placed in a cloudless east
by the God who rules that sun
to take a breath
and that breath is fresh,
When this is how a day breaks –
though Winter’s dry heart may hate it
though Frost’s harsh fury may bite it,
though devils conspire against it –
That day is ours
That day is today and
more certainly than red blood courses through these veins
That day
is
New...