This Too Shall Pass
“Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them,
O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”
—The Bible (KJV)
Go tell the glist’ning rocks upon the shore,
The moon shall call her waters back again.
This too shall pass, for it has passed before.
The stones endure, the crashing torrents wane.
Go tell the shriveled trees and dried up wells,
This too shall pass. Go speak of coming rain,
Promise this land’s long thirst shall soon be quelled,
And dormant seeds shall burst upon the plain.
Go tell the dried-up bones that lie in wait,
This too shall pass. They do not wait in vain,
For breath returns and longing shall abate,
New flesh shall form, new blood run in their veins.
Go tell my people cast adrift, outcast,
This pain they shall outlast: this too shall pass.
Otherness
“And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast
of the field, and every fowl of the air… but for Adam there
was not found an help meet for him.” —The Bible (KJV)
From out the ground He made each beast, the words
The Master poet spoke took form in bones
And flesh. He shaped with care the oxen, birds,
Fish of the sea. And yet man stood alone.
For he, like them, was made at first complete.
He’d had no taste of longing, till a sleep
Like death stole over him, and his heartbeat
Was stilled and from his side came She, the deep
Who called to deep. She was not made apart,
Distinct in earth and form. No, she was made
From bone of bones and flesh of flesh. And heart
Spoke unto heart, each naked, unafraid.
And in this school of human love, they learned
Of Otherness and what it meant to yearn.
Justin Dasher is an emerging poet from Pueblo, Colorado. He studied philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder and currently serves with the Chaplain’s office at the United States Military Academy. He writes poetry on his Substack, Spaces in Between.
These are both extraordinarily beautiful, Justin! I was captivated by your imaginative, expansive thoughts on these profound stories. You expand on Ezekiel’s apostrophe to the dry bones with apostrophes to rocks and trees and wells. You relate the dry bones to the drought of the land, and several times you work in a lovely refrain of “this too shall pass”. And in “Otherness”, you’ve made a meaningful statement about the difference between the creation of humanity and that of animals: “She, the deep that called to deep” — a beautiful echo, I think of a psalm, as well as the creation of the world. And I love how you’ve related that the Creator is the “Master poet”.