Tag Archives: poem

Love Take Me Captive

by


O Captain of my heart
On Love’s Tree
You penetrate the Lie.

You, victorious in Death,
Descend, piercing the Earth
To ransom Adam’s seed.

Scale my stony ramparts;
Pull down vanity’s tower;
Besiege the Gates of Hell.

Trumpet Your holy rage.
As with thundering steed and burnished sword,
Capture and hold fast my soul.

Call “Beloved” Your desolate one;
Call “Espoused” she who mourns
Her innocence’s demise.

Circle me about with Promise.
Covenant me in Blood Sacrifice.
Ascend on high with wedded bride..

O, Love Divine, make me Thine!

©2010  Joann Nelander

FAR FLUNG

by

I miss them.
I miss them all.

The years have flung them about,
Scattered them to the four winds
With little care,
And less a say.

My friends, not here,
But there,
And everywhere.

So hard to hold,
Though near, in heart,
But, oh, so very far apart.

So very dear!
I want them,
Here.

copyright 2015 Joann Nelander

TAKE CARE

by

Pray,
Take care
Who you turn away.

Give thought,
And ‘haps a listening ear.

In truth,
The heart of God
Beats in the beggars breast.

copyright 2015 Joann Nelander

The Visitors

by

What did they say?
The men that came, then went their way.

Seeking the One all people long to see,
They left their hearths, these Wise Men Three.

“Where is He?”; the question echoes through ages long.
As He seeks a home ‘mong busy throng.

We prayed, sang and offered gifts beneath a tree.
Because He’s come for hearts, He’s come for me.

Where is He of blessed event,
Now the festive limbs are spent?

Has He found a hearth to call a throne?
Has He your heart to be His own?

©2015 Joann Nelander

NOW FOR ETERNITY

by

All days have led to this day.
Yesterdays march up to the edge in Time,
But cannot enter upon my Now.

As precursors they stand,
Peering onto this Today,
Blind as bats.
Their edges approach
But halt at the Present.

Here I reign with my will.
If all my mistakes
Shout for change,
Am I now the fool
Who fails to learn?

With the sun,
I am begun.
Eternity beckons me,
Where Time cannot go,
Invites, “Come.”

He, Who sails on Eternity’s Wing,
Would be my Mender,
Not in a breaking of the Past,
But a knitting of it,
A seamless cloth,
As His very own.

The morrow begins as a Way I choose;
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Are gift to my being,
And beginning in this Now,
I am His.

©2015 Joann Nelander

LONGINUS, SOLDIER SAINT

by

Longinus,
You, who beheld Life,
As your Savior
Hung between Heaven and Earth,
Dying on His Cross,
Your heart came alive
At the sight of the Mother’s agony.

The thrust of your spear
Lanced the heart of the Christ
And pierced your own
To let Him enter,
He, who would henceforth,
Possess you in contemplation.

His blood, falling upon weak and worldly eyes,,
Touched in you, the pagan,
Opening eyes blind to the things of God,
With the sight of the Holy.

Your life became a contemplation
Of the Dying and the Rising,
Did you fall into a sleep,
As the angels descended to roll away the stone?
Did premonitions of sacred mystery stir you,
Wakening the soldier witness soul,
To serve not merely an emperor,
But True God?

The Cassius of the Crucifixion
Died, only to open his eyes in faith,
And live, henceforth a new man,
With a story of Blood and Water,
And New Life,

copyright 2014 Joann Nelander