Broken

By Robert Morrison Randolph

An old man feels beautifully broken into prayer by God's presence, and these poems are the shards of that breakage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666765779

Robert Morrison Randolph

Robert Morrison Randolph is Professor of English at Waynesburg University and Professor Emeritus from Texas State University. He has been a Fulbright teaching scholar in Finland and Greece, and for twelve years pastored a small rural church near the Monongahela River. He is the author of Floating Girl: Angel of War (2006).

Book preview

1

Reaching for You,

I come apart and stand between my body and the sea,

like a window between inside and outside.

I do not try to pull myself together

because my destiny, my love for You, Lord,

has its own life.

2

The moon’s pure body

breaks the sea into waves.

You have broken me into prayer.

3

Wind bends the sapling by the pergola.

Snow whorls through itself.

I swirl through myself trying to find You.

So many back roads lead out of my bones

I am just an old man living at the edge of his heart.

4

There is a small room in Appalachia,

dogs barking all night, fog off the river,

where I write poems in pencil on graph paper,

one letter per square, about feeling alone

apart from You. In winter, ice crystals

lace the window and gusts of wind

relocate layers of snow, leaving bare ground.

Anyone can be peeled to the heart,

peeled to You.

5

Asleep, I float

on my dreams

like floating on a dim mirror.

Awake, the river of my blood

holds open its door to You.

6

I sit on a wooden bench in a garden,

dying to know You,

woven