Oblivious

Oblivious

You, with your acne scarred face
and spiky hair, a teen with childlike fantasies alight in your imagination,
you talk of dinosaurs still roaming the Earth and mourn their deaths again and again.

You're odd and unaccepted among peers, yet oblivious to their belief that you are insignificant.

You sit in the backseat of my car,
Singing along with your new CD
by a Christian songwriter I’ve never heard and I ponder your God,
my God.  You, with so few gifts
but that one, your voice, resonating
with the music.  Arms raised up
to the heavens, you declare your faith, “praise God” you proclaim. 
Without reservation, without a doubt,
He is yours. 

And somehow, the weight of your liabilities, the burden of you
is carried back home where you began, a twinkle in His eye.
It's as if God says, “Let’s see
if they can find the golden needle
in the haystack, or will they merely see the impossibility of you
and turn their backs in frustration.”

God does have a sense of humor and I think you were in on the joke.
Driving you home from that hospital
we put kids when they act strange or unwise, for just a moment between my embarrassment and empathy,
I saw a golden glint in your eye.
In the harmonious notes of your song,
I heard the sound of that haystack shifting from the weight of our worries
for you, our fears about you. 
And I pray we never lose sight of that needle,while we seek our own lost faith, shifting haystacks as we search. 

Maybe, if we found our own
glimmer of hope, we could sing
like you, with you, out loud, among people we scarcely know,
oblivious to our fear of
insignificance.


SWPoet

Dedicated to the slow and misunderstood,
with hidden gifts we dare not ignore,
a fire we dare not extinguish,
and a message we dare not silence.
*This was about a real person and client of mine.