advent journal: saints of diminished capacity

I have been going back through some poems I wrote several years ago. My intention was not to repeat them, necessarily, but a couple of them have taken hold in new ways and feel as though they are worth bringing to light once more. I needed these words tonight. I hope they find you, too.

I only saw the words written,
requiring me to infer tone;
to assume either compassion
or conceit; to decide if the poet
mimed quotation marks when
he said, “diminished capacity,” —
or saints, for that matter —
if he even said the words out loud.

Either way, the phrase is
fragrant with failure, infused
with what might have been,
what came and went,
what once was lost . . .
and now is found faltering,
struggling, stumbling,
still hoping, as saints do,
failure is not the final word.

Forgiveness flows best from
brokenness; the capacity for
love is not diminished by
backs bowed by pain, or
hearts heavy with grief.
Write this down: the substance
of things hoped for fuels
those who walk wounded:
we are not lost; we are loved.

Peace,
Milton