The King

by Lynn Michael Martin

Ride on, ride on! Your foes, they fall away,
like chaff to fly and flutter in the air,
and settle where we know not, nor do care—
what see our eyes but you on this brave day?
You are the dawn of light, the morning’s ray,
you are the sky unclouded, full and fair—
well may that dragon cower in his lair,
in chains where, for a time, our champion lay.
So long his horrors ruled this world, and pains
unnumbered racked us where those horrors stood,
and, as those ransomed bear the scars of chains,
your body bears the prints of steel and wood—
The prints of love—the sign of him who reigns—
Praise be to God! All things have come to good.

Lynn Michael Martin is slowly learning that he is not the center of the world.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy