Beauty in the Broken

Vasquez Rocks--spring '11

This thrusting, chaotic, rock-crushing shifting of tectonic plates,
this ragged, jagged, slicing of crust,
burying, exposing, reforming my molten world—
and yet I hear you say:
“What a beautiful mountain God has made—purple mountain majesty!”
“What a glorious sunset—divine splendor!”
And it is . . . except . . . it isn’t.  
          This is the brokenness;
                    this is the cataclysmic fall,
                              the precipice-leaning creation crying loud.
Don’t you hear the groaning, the moaning, the lament for rescue?
Don’t you see these splintered leftovers, the hints of what was and could be again?
If there is so much beauty in this bleeding,
so much to inspire in this crushing,
what brilliance perished with our devilish choice?
And what glorious liberation waits for a creation chained?
Maranatha!