Returning Poem by Smoky Hoss

Then - that tender, gentle age,
When I loved Jesus...
More than I knew the world.
And then - those difficult days,
When the world was heard, calling,
Swearing great allegiance to me...
I succombed, believed... finally fell.
Again and again;
Along I went, into the current.
The world became my obscurant.

How easily - and sadly - had I gone;
All that time, trying something to find,
Singing an obsequious song.
Though in the far distance - always - I heard
A much different sound,
True music played on, and on.
Not in my mind,
Not in my head,
Truth in my heart,
Refused to give me up
For dead.

God yet speaks.
The ears of a child within, listen.
The voice of all the sacred wisdom,
Of all the earth,
Calling; as regeneration comes forth.

I have found,
At the far end of myself,
The real beginning,
Of God's reign,
The fecund change -
That ever moves...
Yet, always remains.
Allowing myself to slip
Into pure freedom,
Finding I've lost nothing.
A peace to settle
The sauntering soul;
The necessity of simply being.

Now - I know the world -
And, I love God
More than the world can measure;
And here, I hope
To know him in tender true love,
Greater than ever.

-What horrors are wrought
Upon the innocents when taught
To honor the presses of time, those
That bear down the heart,
And those that turn around the mind;
What evils fraught, within young souls
Begun so pure,
Become the exiles,
That God alone can cure?

When oh Lord, will death be done,
When shall life's winter be 'oer?
- When, shines again, the light and warmth of the sun.
When I - and all - die no more.
- When I for he,
And he for me, in
That true tender, gentle love,
That only more than one alone can see,
Shall reside innocent, and eternally.

And beyond? - I am still returning.
Thus, lifelong shall I be;
Yet now - fully believing, by grace,
I am forever Gods - forever free.

'The end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'
- T.S. Eliot