Genesis and Re-Genesis

“Genesis and Re-Genesis”

We dwelt in darkness. There was nothing we

Could feel or grasp: no solid place to stand.

We dwelt long-silent, till a living wind

Blew over us and carried words that sang:

“Let there be light! Let darkness fly away!

The living voice will build a world of day.”

We lay alone without a beating heart

To tell we lived or loved. Our drooping hand

Left Eden’s feast un-tasted, till the breath

That animates all things commanded us:

“Let there be life! Get up, reach out, and know;

You must fulfill the love that made you so.”

We walked and wept where dawn would never come;

A garden where the flower and fruit were death;

Where guards would keep the closing of the doors;

But earth and heaven shook to wake the sun:
“Let all be new. Let freedom without fear

Arise! And I will banish every tear.”

By Dennis Evans, September 2013

Tokens of Love

Almond Orchard, near North Butte, February 1014

Tokens of Love

My Lord you have come, and I know that you never will leave.

Your love in its fullness breaks forth on me as I believe.

Your beauty surrounds me and carries me day after day

In vows never broken; unfailing, though I go astray.

You give me assurance by emblems in heaven and earth

That play on my spirit and tune me to freedom and mirth.

In all things you show me your power, salvation and praise,

Revealed by your Spirit in witness that none can erase.

Your grandeur in mountains, your force in the four winds, are shown;

Your swiftness in lightning and racing of clouds that are blown.

Your ever-new mercy dawns daily, so much am I blessed,

As sun always rises though seeming to fade in the west.

I’m baptized in rainfall, today shines with light from your throne.

All things chant unceasing your promise that I am your own.

Because of your presence around and within me I see

How wondrous you are, and rejoice for your living in me.

Dennis Evans, written January 1975 and revised.

I wrote most of this poem riding the three days and two nights it took to travel by the Greyhound bus from California to Dubuque, Iowa, where I was beginning seminary. The poem took up ways, using all my senses, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit had made themselves known to me in the creation, as a (then) twenty-three year old.

Sutter Buttes, February 2014