From Genesis 15:5-6: “He brought him [Abram] outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
From Genesis 1:29-30: “God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”
From Colossians 3:1-2: “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.”
This series of poems (written in the German-inspired style of Elfchen or Elevenie) shares a total of eleven words in each poem, with a sequence by line of one, two, three, four, and one words.
From Joel 2:12-13: “Yet even now, says the Lord,return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God,for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,and relenting from punishment.”
From Psalm 51:10-11: “Create in me a clean heart, O God,and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence,and do not take Your holy spirit from me.”
In December, 1989, the Romanian Revolution ignited with passion, which would no longer wait in silence. The rest of the Eastern Bloc countries under Soviet influence had already experienced peaceful change from communist dictatorships. Under Nicolae Ceausescu’s harsh leadership, Romania was the final holdout as the democratic wave of freedom blitzed across Eastern Europe. The city of Timisoara was the first in Romania to secure its freedom, with the rest of the country to follow. This poem shares some of this revolution’s story.