Lord, I stand at my window and wait for you
with basil in the window-box I dream of the farm I do not have.
With a small place to live I dream of the mountain retreat I do not have.
In the darknesses of my little rooms I dream of the
sunlit solarium I have not built onto the mountain house
that I do not have.

I stand on legs now weaker than those of my youth
supporting a body wracked by time and bruised by life.
And sometimes I stand there imagining a family behind me,
which I do not have; and so I dare not turn around.

But you, oh Lord await me if I will only turn around.
Like Moses’ turning, like Mary’s turnings,
we turn around and there you are.

You wait for us in the darknesses of what we do not have
and you are there in that cave of longings.

You stand fully erect, in the darknesses beyond our
regrets, just past our longings, not far from
our betrayals, nearby our diagnoses
so close to us as to lunch forward and catch us if we collapse
from the weight of it all and whispering to us from the
darknesses, encouraging us to look out into the Light
with a hope which seems wove in time to every
prophet and All The Saints who have stared out of their windows and caves
to see the Light which inspires a “yes” for another day.

Gabriel, helped Mary with her “yes.”
God arrived to help Moses with his yes
in the first divine conversation with humanity.

Today, from the darkness behind us and with the morning light
on our faces in our windows and cave entrances warming our
coldnesses;
reach out from behind us.
Touch our cheeks from behind us
and whisper that all manner of thing shall be well.
And whisper so close that we feel the moisture of your resurrected breath
on the back of our neck.