Exhaling

I am enjoying the conversation immensely, friends.
Here is sonnet #2 from Seven Sonnets through the Dark:

Nocte intempesta
(at dead of night)
“…therefore my spirit fails; my heart is numb within me…” Psalm 143

Had I never known You, this would be despair;
This blinded discalced march a beat apart
Through hollow ashen wind and foreign air,
Bleaching bones, dry-curing brain and heart.
Over fields of shattered glass I tread, I bleed,
Balancing burdens full with shallow breath;
Sorting shards to the small dry cellar of my need
Where I bear the silent shrouding of this death.
But in the hope that I once knew, I persevere
Through dark obliterating all sense of place,
Though barren roots of dread, distrust inhere
Because I can no longer see Your Face.
I trace my map in sand falteringly,
Gathering courage to walk out on the sea.