The Archer

Bow tightly strung, shoulders taut

I stand poised on mountains

With gravely shaking legs

A seasoned eye and mind my gain

I take note

Of lethal acrobatic height

Pluck splinters to their bitter end

And sing all manner of warbled lullabies

Stalwart grace and knees well spent

Shaping small earthen hearts toward infinite Divine

With ears that hear what is never said

I point thoroughly to places hard to find

After years of valiant deposit

And sanding down closets of doubt

My bullets form well below the sand

Their eyes and minds in route

In distances felt more than seen

Measure taken of all failed stands

Lifting hands to check the wind

Lifting wings to check for span

Through nights of brave and cautious razing

Smoothing the onset of every hope

And offering the killing of every kind of loving

But to firstly place that One withstanding grope

Carving sharp heads to bind to blazing hearts

Wringing from flint the finest work

And circling every shadowed angle

Watching imperfections or stony dirt

My muscled years of squinted eye

And little hearts of trusting shape

Sent forth with quick fast arcing flame

Sights confirmed for deadly aim

Letting great hands move me

Through positions of every honing sense

My hands holding with the ease of an archer

An arsenal to silence the largest defense

Jillian Rose

"As arrows are in the hand of a warrior,
so are the children of one's youth"
Psalm 127:4

The Leaving

The upper world ablaze

Quiet trees in slow-simmered murmur

Hissing death in brilliant splendour

Remembering the Crucifixion

Green grown dark, blood-red,

With royal golden crown

The pruned and manifested light

Glorious surrender from a green-steeped life

And falling with

Height-drunken and subdued ballet

They sink into the brothy history

My own rich and layered seasoning

Becoming muffled testimony

Of that most-stretched reach,

The branching death and Life-thawed birth

That beckons all

Whispered staccato of rain falling

And changing of old guards

From firefly evenings of loose-tied cloths

To a weaving of the grayer cocoon

Where we will draw close

With communion once again

By fireside and thick warmth

Humming our anticipation of emerging buds

In high strung breezes

In crawling golden afternoons

Of woodsmoke and God's own confetti 

We find the oldest song of love

Jillian Rose

The Great Switcharoo

The Great Switcharoo

You trudged that lonely hill to find

A foresworn play of cacophonic Grace

In all that noise, the lonely Mind

And ailing curses in their place

Of love were You born, and loved to death

Were sent for stricken, choked off breath

Sweat provoking the smaller flies

That flew and spat and smote Your cries

In foreward angle, foreordained

A backward glance at broken lanes

(in gardens of old, now guarded by flames)

Outside it all You once stood regal

Inside You folded down with beetles

And smaller things, like reverent rust

Found despair's asthmatic trust

Was broken for my sake, and bent

Grave-bound and sold for an earthquaked Lent

Their acid burn of condescension

Did we forget You commanded legions?

A fleet to guard the human race

At Your small word to slash in haste

Or remember when You giant-sang?

And stones slayed monolithic slang?

Always the fool to silence the wise

Always the quieter Babylon demise

But there on crooked creaking beams

That still grow strong from ancient seeds

You, raised to look out, halfway-dead

On the many-haired and numbered heads

Found ashes to Your enveloping beauty

My harlotry known from Advent's ready

We were meant to stand there small, below

And catch from You fresh crimson flow.

The old song meeting on intersection

The new cup of promised resurrection

And on folded knees at the foot of that Moat

We were built to hope for that only Hope.

-Jillian Rose