I Have Prayed For Spiritual Guidance Poem by Mark Heathcote

Indeed, there is no need for gratitude or prayers
I have wept oceans and arrived nowhere
I have crawled beneath stale bedsheets unawares
How to move forward freshly prepared

I have prayed for spiritual guidance.
But have been met by only deafening silence
And yet somehow, I am still here sightless
Hoping to find a better way to exist in defiance

Defiance of bitterness, I pray for my soul
But I care -not truly where I wander or go...
Peace is a grace dreamt by some poetic fool
Calm is a dead body of water with no undertow.

With no pull to carry a floating discarded leaf
But no healing will we find in a teardrop alone
We must all reach out like a desert in our belief
There is a coast within easy reach of us all unknown

And if we but step forward blind and empty
We will find an oasis trembling with a living breath
A whispering of amens, monks in a monastery
Glorifying our life and our ultimate death

A gentle wind serpentine in love and savagery
Softly deceives to circumvent our better nature
And exploit our carefree ego almost involuntary
But in the end, might I not fall like a godless gladiator?

'Might you or I not cry alone? '
'Might you or I not die alone? '
Spīritus Sānctus takes dominion of the air.
God, in his wisdom, loves us and wants us all in his care.

Crying endless tears into a spiritual void a dead loam.
Lord, let the subsoil explode into a carpet of magnolia flowers.
Lord, let the incineration of my bones be sent to a catacomb.
But not my soul, instead like a column of air reaching higher.

Let me rise where no darkness can follow.
Let me dry my eyes and shadow you in your footsteps tomorrow.
Because foolishly I do believe and have constant faith in you
Even though I cry and pretend with every breath not to.
I do. Lord, really I do.