Bypass lips, and tongue, to ask a soul a question. The answer you will get is a journey.

My friend John at Thoughts, Dreams and Enigmatic Things blog asked me to write something he could share on his own blog. I was honored when he asked, and had to take a good long think about what I would write. After I started writing I had to stop, and think again…

I am not sure why, but an episode from my favorite TV show, MASH, kept coming back to me. In this episode, Father John Mulcahy takes a trip up to the front line with Radar to pick up a wounded soldier. On the way back, the injured man chocks and stops breathing. The Father has to perform a tracheotomy on the side of the road, with the surgeons from the MASH unit guiding him over the radio. The procedure is a success.

Well anyway, that bit of remembering prompted this reflection.

Like a tracheotomy, the writing of poetry lets me breath while I choke.

It’s an invasive cutting, digging and searching through self.

Often its prayers whispered in pain, or shouted silently inside my brain.

Always, it’s a breathing out of questions.

I strive to make poetry, all that is worship. Not worship of self, but of the one who does the cutting and inserting of my breathing straw. The one who hears the silent words, the whispers. The one who writes the poem of me, for His, the author’s glory.

Thank you for asking me to think, John.

©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef