Jessica Powers’ Poetry

To Live with the Spirit

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener.
It is to keep the vigil of mystery,
earthless and still.
One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit,
strange as the wind’s will.

The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows
turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love.
It may lament like Job or Jeremiah,
echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove.
It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow
that emulates the freedom of the sky.
Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing;
it has cast down forever from its hand
the compass of the whither and the why.

To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.
It is becoming love, and like to Him
toward Whom we strain with metaphors of creatures:
fire-sweep and water-rush and the wind’s whim.
The soul is all activity, all silence;
and though it surges Godwards to its goal,
it holds, as moving earth holds sleeping noonday,
the peace that is the listening of the soul.

-Jessica Powers

Georgia Breeze

Bm Cmaj G C Cm Bm Am G
There is a lantern full of light
He leads me through the darkness of the night
all this indifference leaves me numb
I’m going back down South where I am from

I am filled with holy peace
though it is a cold wind that I breathe
Come back South with me, my dear
Feel the Georgia breezes in your ear

We can lie
beneath the moon’s harmless rays
we can talk and talk and talk
and let the night turn into day
I’m going home
I’m going to see my mother soon
I’m going home
and if you want you can come too

I am not deep at all
I’m the shallowest of men
A pine tree in the sand
has better chance in wind.

The willow tree his roots
like penetrating vines
shall search the ground entire
to find the well it hides.

My heart is like a bird
that sets out on his own
and having gotten far
forgets the way back home

O never let me roam
far from the grassy sea
o plant me like a flower
I’ll burn and burn for thee

O make me like a tree
well rooted in the land
and make me like a hawk
that knows his master’s hand