The Eyes of Jesus | Infant Loss and Awareness

The Eyes of Jesus

I imagine the eyes of Jesus

Were harvest brown,

The light of their gazing

Suffused with the seasons:

The shadow of winter,

The mind of spring,

The blues of summer,

And amber of harvest.

A gaze that is perfect sister

To the kindness that dwells

In his beautiful hands.

The eyes of Jesus gaze on us,

Stirring in the heart's clay

The confidence of seasons

That never lose their way to harvest.

This gaze knows the signature

Of our heartbeat, the first glimmer

From the dawn that dreamed our minds,

The crevices where thoughts grow

Long before the longing in the bone

Sends them toward the mind's eye,

The artistry of the emptiness

That knows to slow the hunger

Of outside things until they weave

Into the twilight side of the heart,

A gaze full of all that is still future

Looking out for us to glimpse

The jeweled light in winter stone,

Quickening the eyes that look at us

To see through to where words

Are blind to say what we would love,

Forever falling softly on our faces,

His gaze piles the soul with light,

Laying down a luminous layer

Beneath our brief and brittle days

Until the appointed dawn comes

Assured and harvest deft

To unravel the last black knot

And we are back home in the house

That we have never left.

~ John O'Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us