In Terra

By Steven Searcy

---

It is an ancient wound
yet perpetually fresh,
rubbed raw again and again--
to wake each day
in a world where work
never ceases and
never fully succeeds,
where whispers and glimpses of beauty
keep us clinging to a hope
that goodness could be real and lasting,
yet the continual calamities,
frustrations, and aches
never allow a full certainty
that anything will ever be
all right in the end.
 
How stuck in the middle
we are, on this earth
that we inhabit--
constantly drawn toward a bliss
beyond what we now know,
yet tethered to a hell
that never seems to die,
and we all stand,
stumbling, unwieldy,
straddling the chasm.

---

Steven Searcy lives with his wife and three sons in Atlanta, Georgia, where he earns a living working as an engineer in fiber optic telecommunications. His poetry has been published in Ekstasis Magazine, Reformed Journal, Fathom Magazine and The Clayjar Review.

​Steven's previous work on Foreshadow:
Misjudged (Poetry, October 2022)
Morning Prayer (Poetry, August 2022)
​Do What Cannot Be Left Undone (Poetry, September 2022)
Being (Poetry, October 2022)