The Blood of Abel
Unsettled and uneasy with heavy shoulders,
and graying out my sense of color,
this weight lingers just above me.
I struggle to decipher what I see
and what I know.
The underbelly of a beast
feels the ground protesting its feast,
where Abel cries out, desperate to be heard;
the seed of his life stolen by cruel birds.
All men suffer and all men die,
but this? this grips me inside
like tendrils loose enough to give me room,
yet entrapping me with a sense of gloom.
Is what we reap really what we sow?
I smell blood and death
yet know of glory's bredth-
This paradox arrests my thoughts;
is frustration all but naught?
In quiet buildings and classroom halls,
colors hide in corners, afraid of the Fall.
The sounds break silence and cut through more:
life doesn't soak into tile floors,
nor retreat its flow.
How long, O Lord,
must they die by the sword?
How long must time repeat the terrible?
I cannot stand the story of Abel.
Blood pleads, thick and drawing near,
"Why weren't you here?"
Why are there children of Cain?
When will you restore the slain?
Yet you do know.
This did not all go on unseen,
they aren't left alone, in need.
Help us to wait, O Lord,
for our hearts to be restored.
YB 07 4 18
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