Sometimes I wish I could molt, like a crab, or a bird. Wake up with a new skin. Or fresh feathers. Not simply for the sake of laying aside the wrinkles that greet me each day, or those strange sunspots, but to inhabit a fresh home.
Knowing that God’s mercies are new each morning, I have the opportunity to re-inhabit His grace with the sunrise. This sonnet imagines the joy of this “molting” as a heartbeat, as a rhythmic and poetic repentance that invites me to bow and rise daily, with new skin.
It was first published in beautiful collection of poems written with my friends - The Habitation Volume 2.
To Molt in Meter
That I might molt in iambs over time,
and loose this crab-like crust from sticky skin—
a steady shed of self beneath a cracked
repentance, pulsed in cadence, wave-like breath
as metered poem, bodied liturgy
in seamless fissure, splintered heart unveiled
then softened, unstressed, kneaded, til pride—
its stinging surge and hardened husk of soul
might fracture in knee-bent Sabbath bowing
and toss its skeleton, another shell
renouncing rhythmic sin that crests in depths
but drowns beneath the bath of bloodied song
and grace, her sheathing freed to bend and grow
before—new-skinned, I wear my truest Home.
Oh, to shed the cracks!
I LOVE your writing. The images are what stick with me most! To know we go through life aging and sometimes building harsh skin/shells yet to think of the newness we can have because of freshness that comes with the morning is the way i want to walk through it!