Listening Still

I listen carefully for your voice,
  certain it will pulse with baritone smoothness
  massaging my anxieties, securing my soul's footings,
  feeding its fast. I listen in the lyrics of
  songsters and poets, in the cadences of preachers
  and newsmen, in the overheard confidences of diners and
  busriders, in the affection of friends and intimates.
I keep listening, slowly deafening myself
  to higher pitches as if to siren songs or comfortable
  seductions, sure as I am that Truth could not come
  from breasts that too easily give their breath
  to words. Altoed hushes promise
  color and light splash, honey and chocolate, down-
  filled beds and kindled fireplaces. But Reality
  and Identity remain the reserve of deeper
  vibratos stealing upon me like remote thunder
  or rhythmic tide whose weight, regardless how
  familiar and regular, carry me under in surprising
  force to a drowning helplessness that relieves me
  of the burden of my own survival and lifts me
  to a life undeserved but that I reach for
  with every word I utter
  and muscle I flex.
I listen
  and wait
    and listen still.

"Karakter"

You have watched me hobbled by circumstances from birth,
living in shame for what I could not help.
You have taunted me with promise of belonging and
an abominable curse until I don't know which to deny,
or whether to cling to both.
You have known my efforts to outrun myself and become,
become What I do not know;
You have seen me fail miserably,
left with who I always have been until the end
When you write 'Father' across my inheritance and
end the struggle to become myself.

The Question

It is implied in Luther's mot "sin boldly" that we possess great power to sin. Henri Nouwen writes of sin as a powerlessness to do anything but fall short: sin as an enigma of impotency vs. an engine of importunity. Both, I suppose are true and either requires the intervention of God Himself to interrupt our waywardness in an act of might and grace that we might be saved. Might. The tentativeness of the assertion is betrayed in a synonym of 'power' itself and betrays the indeterminacy of certain perseverance and particular election. At the end of it all, I still must fall. Whether it is a fall forward on my face or a fall backward into waiting arms is the question of hourless time.