The crumbled ruins lay at my feet,
tired remains of the beautiful edifices they once were.
Broken and dejected, mirrors of my shattered heart,
as they lay with empty eyes fixed in death,
cold corpses that once housed life.
A gentle breeze murmurs sympathy
then moves on to allow my grief privacy,
while the stillness of mortality is all that remains
along with a handful of haunting memories.
The memorials that had once stood in honor of my faith and childhood
are now indiscernible from the other shattered and blackened pieces of stone.
Here I had lived, laughed, loved.

Staring out over the desolation,
my hopes and dreams
are crushed and charred like the bricks at my feet.
I turn and scream to the heavens
Who will build again this city?
Am I alone in this desolate waste?
Then I sense something that I’d before missed.
A stirring of the straggly grass
struggling to thrust its green head out of the ruins.
A whisper of the barren trees that remain,
still stretching their limbs to the sky.
Like floating alabaster clouds in their ocean of endless azure,
words of blessed comfort
sigh peace and purpose into my soul.
I will go.
Jerusalem will stand once more.