sin curves

i keep wondering about sin and redemption. i wonder about what courage is. is it taking the flames of the devil, offering hair and eyebrows and skin that my iron blood be refined and cast in his hot winds like a cliffside tree is shaped, molded, and strengthened by the storms it faces? is not the ugly and twisted and exposed cliffside tree somehow more majestic than a shady valley oak?

or is courage wisely surrendering this one battle of battles to jesus or another protector, another carrier of tablets, of etched stone ethic? maybe this is enough: simply walking this narrow stone path, still so mysterious, still so graded and difficult without the added hubris of trying to attack sleeping dragons at the same time.

and i look to my own sins for signs, for answers or better questions. i watch them fly back home ragged with hollow eyes, but eyes that have seen something. and i question them mercilessly but their secrets are unspeakable. they have been around some bend and lost a taste for testimony. but they are all I have-- another man's sins are not enough-- an echo of a voice is not that voice. and so i set to more plunder, more delicious rape, begging for virtue's song to fall from the unspoken silence.