The Dust Of Love Is All We Have At Hand Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

A photograph of a small girl
Taken by her heart-broken father
Shows his daughter in hospital
Pretty, bare-chested but in dreadful pain

Her mouth rictus clinched
Tears in her desperate eyes
Waiting for something, anything,
That offers relief and reliving -

She is only four years old
Dying in torture from cancer.

If I or perhaps more likely you
Had faith as much as a grain of mustard
This mountain could be moved
But then again not a speck or mote

Has ever been brought to atonement
From the very beginning of the universe
Though seeds have been long planted
And offerings asked of the bereaved:

Faith is too fine a grain for us it seems -
The dust of love is all we have at hand.