O let me steal a march on time
For Eternity’s sake and thine.

To gain a day
While the moon and sun hold sway.

And with a single heart,
Neither wasting, nor forfeiting
My allotted part before the chime.

To know all my work done
Ere the hammer’s stroke,
That slays the running man,
Who from his sleep a woke
To find that time is no more.

Let me not,
As in my greener days,
Remand responsibilities,
To scatter random moments along the way.

Let me not descend
To merely eat and drink and walk upon the earth,
To make my bed here as if it were my home.

Touch me with thine angel’s hand
That I would measure out for you
Each grain of sand.

Awaken me.
Make me alert and ready to the test.
Not almost or nearly,
But wholly thy man.

So much for others rides upon my breast.

Elliott Tepper

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. Rev 21:23

As my eye revisits what I wrote,
What I saw on the auroric edge,
Of Heaven’s light kissing Adam’s artic night,
Light returns to where Eternity spoke,
In time’s shadowed valley—
And then to touch my heart and mind
With wordless Light beyond all imaginings.

A word writ or read is not the Light,
But holds onto the light,
To trace His thoughts’ thin tracks in time
That He might mark a place in me
Where memory may return to remember.

Before your glories and divine transparencies
Sunlight is as shadow,
Men’s reasonings as mixed tones of light and darkness.

O Lord,
Be quick and present to arrive in time in time.
For day will end when your Day beginss
And there shall be a sorting of universes.

One kept.
One laid aside.

One folded up and put away
To be destroyed by fire.

One lit and let to live in Lamb’s light forever.

Elliott Tepper