Volume > Issue > The Final Match

The Final Match

A POEM

By Lorraine Bochler Eshleman | April 1986

My very breath seems evidence of You.
My pulse throbs with a Spirit not my own.

The warmth within my body is somehow

more than mine,
And life itself seems to be but on loan.

And strangely You seem more real than all

The things around that I can see or feel.

The hand that holds the pencil seems
sometimes but a dream,

But You, Whom I can’t touch, completely real.

How strange it is to know You, know

You well —

To know You better than the concrete world —

To know You not in logic, but as answer

As if a map had slowly been uncurled.

It is a vision of the heart — no eyes

Can see the Phantom Bearer of the map,

But the heart falls down before its unexpected Guest

And knows that it has met its final match.

To Phoebe*

Phoebe,

Gentle handmaid

Of us all,

Who assisted Paul

And others

Of the early church,

…

Parting

Let the air be taken from me;

Let no water touch my tongue.

Though my…

Autobiography of a Creature from Deep Heaven

I was the spark

who lit the face of God

when he flicked his rod

…