From Sea to Dark Dead Sea

[This poem is about the modern American mindset and its influence upon the Church. It does not reflect a crushing depression on the part of the poetess.]

The Jordan in but never out,
So knowledge takes in me such route
In brackish waters to brood about
The suppression of true freedom's shout---
The Dead Sea.

At lowest point, then, here I sit.
The deepest depression of deep'ning rift.
The deep'ning gloom---and shall it lift?
Integrity's shroud, hides Holy Writ. . .
Apathy.

As just-hatched bird by Nature bred
Lives just to squawk and so be fed
I now by histr'y do so defend
By justified means I reach this end:
The Bland Me.

I lived through day, I lived through night;
I lived through love, I lived through fright;
I turned inside to put to flight
The hopeless failures from crueller sight:
The Dead Me.

Whether by mindless shallowness
Or endless, stale analysis,
In Sophist and in Hedonist
The fear of Feeling here exists:
The fear "to be."

On me they float but can't dive in:
Cannot drown but cannot swim.
Advance in skills. . .Retreat within. . .
A merry-go-round with fatal spin. . .
Technology?!?!

Oh, to be that other sea,
Parted to let young Israel free,
Closed to drown out cruelty,
Fluid with fresh-faced vitality:
The Red Sea!!!

-----C. Marie Byars, 1987

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