SOUL'S WREST

Flush and bleary with staved-off sleep
I make amends for another (spent) week
No time allowed for midnight passion
I rest, unmade, with hopes to fashion
a better dreamèd dream than on the night before.

When, as it happens, my mind is awakened
by a groaning morbid vision -- me, forsaken
  for the sin of harboured anger
    in my breast against a stranger
  and thus, denied my rest,
    (still) aware o' the danger,
I worry for my soul till the clever clock claps four.

Tonight those fears are lesser, dampened,
by a new spring -- forgiveness -- opened
in the crackled, cementine-solid mantle core--
that surfeit safety stronghold my soul sheds a' more
Lest it bar the way to God, and lose me Evermore.

---jrw 2:15am
3-16-96