I wanted to share a poem I wrote maybe a month ago. I had just finished writing a very long and very silly narrative poem, and I wanted to write something which had a bit more emotional substance. I had this picture of Jesus as the shepherd, leading his flock of sheep through a green countryside. As the story goes, one out of one hundred goes astray, and the shepherd leaves his ninety-nine to go after the one who was lost. I wanted to write a poem from the perspective of that lost little lamb, and so I did. This one’s a bit longer, but I hope it serves to encourage and stand as a reminder that we’re never too far gone to be found.
The Lost One
I traveled by the way of rolling hills;
Those waves of verdure rolling ever on.
I knew the hills, and always had I known
The way they crested, dropped, then rose again.
I traveled not alone but with my kin.
My kin were strong and wooly, as was I,
And always by the hills and as one flock
We made our way and wove along the waves.
The Master at the front of our way led.
His voice was firm and kind, and by our names
He called us, beckoning with His right hand:
We knew His hand and knew His gentle voice.
My brothers and my sisters of the flock
Were safe, and as was I, when by that hand
We let ourselves be led. By day we grazed
And stopped at pools of cool water to drink.
The Master at the front of our way led.
The Master’s leading never went awry.
The days were warm and easy, and at night
We stopped and rested by the Master’s side.
We knew the hills, but what we didn’t know
Were those lands far beyond our line of sight:
The barren places cracked and scorched by sun,
Which never could conceive of hills so fair.
Relentless was the sunlight yet so dark
These flatlands held and with an iron grip.
The soil choked the life of those who tread
Upon that pale and never-ending waste.
How I found myself there I do not know.
The time between is fragmented and coarse.
I jerked my head as if from out a daze
To find the Master gone and flock as well.
I walked through weariness upon that ground;
The land was parched and I was parched alike.
The whiteness of my wool grew caked with dust;
The color of my wool was as the land.
At night, the hungry howls of the wolves
Arrested all my peace and when I dreamt
The ground was dead and blanched and still the wolves
Would feverishly howl in my head.
In time, the fields and hills and all my kin
Slipped past remembrance and into fog
And further past a fog and into doubt
That ever there had been but this the waste.
The sun was punching down with all its might
Midday when that strength left in me seeped out.
I laid my head down in the dust to die,
And faintly heard a voice call out my name.
His voice was like the sea and as complex:
Its force was like the raging, storm-tossed sea.
Its force was like the great mountainous waves
And beat upon the dry, desolate earth.
His voice was like the sea and as complex:
The stillness lapped against my battered brain.
As resolute and calm as any sea
My Master’s voice swept over blistered earth.
I, picking up my head, was overtook
By two sights which I had not seen before:
The first was as a mammoth, gnarled gate
Wrought all of iron dripping with decay.
The gate was open wide, and I could feel
A hot and tempestuous wind that blew:
It smelled of rot and old corroded wood,
And carried on its back a broken dirge.
But this was just the first thing that I saw.
For opposite the gate, with hand outstretched
My Master was approaching by Himself
And once more I heard Him call out my name.
I tried to stand and felt my legs give out.
My body ached more than I’d ever known.
And then, right by my side, my Master’s hands
Supported me in rising to my feet.
He stayed with me and held me while the gate
Was trembling and shaking up the earth.
He stayed with me and then one final time
My name was whispered, and the world grew still.
My Master turned my shoulders, and we left.
He helped me and we left the way he’d come.
To sink into the dust the gate began.
Its power made as feeble as I’d felt.
The flat ocean of nothingness we crossed,
And for some time, I needed to be helped,
But when my strength returned my Master’s voice
Was all I needed to be led along.
And further on we went, and grass began
To shoot up from the ground to wave us on.
And further on we went, and spots of trees
Began to sway in rhythm to the wind.
Then subtly the ground began to slope
Like ripples on the surface of a pond.
And when those ripples grew up into waves,
I knew that I had found my way back home.
My Master led the way, and I in stride
Made certain that His voice alone I heard.
He led me to the water, and I drank
And washed the deep-set dirt from out my wool.
A little further, then, until at last
My eyes came to the others I had known:
As ninety-nine they gathered in a flock
And waited for the one long-lost now found.
I came to them and brushed against their wool,
And when the sun went down sweet was our rest.
Our Master on a rock sat watching long
At all His sheep as one covered by peace.
Michael Riley Writing 
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