Wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Jacob’s Epiphany

Jacob’s Fight (2020) by Julia Stankova

The way He reduces himself
letting Jacob think
he had a chance

The way Jacob cups his hand
around His chin
wondering

The way his red cloak
gushes like blood
from his back

The way his body contorts with fatigue
and his ankles begin to buckle
after a long night of wrestling

The way his tribe watches
on the other side of the Jordan
as if peering into a Palantir

of their own
fight with Yahweh
in the murky future

The way an English poet once too
lay wrestling — O glorious oxymoron!
with his God:

That night, that year…
I wretch lay wrestling with
(my God!) my God

Carrion Comfort, by Gerard Manley Hopkins.