Isaiah's treasure

Circulating now, via internet,

the world is destined to be like

Venus: exquisite, contrapuntal,

very hot, unfit for life as we might

deem it in a billion years or so.

Science makes some sense, even

to the human-absent denouement:

a hundred quintillion years when

nothing feasibly could race away

from dying stars and Charybdis

holes we abbreviate as black.

We may view this from box seats,

or through a glass, darkly, or as

angels, gleaning and being gleaned

by grace and Word and faith alone

—facing the miasma, and falling

on our savior as foretold in Isaiah

forty-two: “Here is my servant,

whom I uphold, my chosen one in

whom I delight;…A bruised reed

he will not break, and a smolder-

ing wick he will not snuff out.”

My forty-seven years are about

apace to that of the human race,

between what Shakespeare says

is rounded by a sleep. I do believe

in angels—perhaps those who’ve

lived in other worlds to see what

sense and sentience we bind and

unfold here. I more believe in the

Lamb of God, who takes away the

sins of the world—we sing that

Agnes Dei to round out every day

and wake to a world that has more

than survived: it’s thrived, on whole,

teeming with unprecedented life

(some might say the walking dead)

that baby-bird-like long to feed

before they long to fly. We are such

stuff as dreams are made on—

from Eden’s clay to earth’s decay,

we are the reason all the atoms

act the way they do, insofar as reason

otherwise would nary have a clue.

I’m half-way through a life that

lives beyond my measure. I dream

of what exists—Isaiah’s treasure.