Duane W. Udd
Merit Award 2007 Utmost Christian Poetry Contest $50
About this Christian Poet:
Duane W. Udd has had a love for poetry all his life. In 1962, at the age of 17, he wrote his first "Message Poem." Off and on since then he has written mostly spiritual and Biblically based poems. However, in 2001, Word of the Lord Publications in Zimbabwe brought out a book of mostly polemical poems entitled, A Tale of Woe, which addressed the turmoil in Zimbabwe, under the evolving tyrannical regime of Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
Duane and his wife Carol have been missionaries to Africa—primarily Zimbabwe—for over two decades. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.
Rhapsody in Black and Blue
God plays with patterns in the clouds
And paints some priceless sunsets
Ere night with scattered light enshrouds
Her more sequestered assets
Both light and dark or hot and cold
Bespeak a changing tempo
With subtle shifts from new to old
Adagio allegro
A minor’s rush to be mature
Breeds major complication
When racing time’s brief overture
Yields to mortification
Years before life’s Grand Finale
Vocal chords and strings sound loose
Mind and muscle melancholy
Tends to reinforce disuse
Aphrodite or Adonis
Seek to flee Persephone
That persistent cold co-heiress
Caught in cyclic constancy
Young at heart with aging body
Can’t concede lithe days of youth
Thoughts beclouded by hot toddy
Hanker back to light vermouth
Flesh had best concede to Spirit
Spirits bottled bear false balm
Truth distilled slakes the temperate
Pours acceptance tinged with calm
Though the outward man must perish
New life springs from death’s decay
With Love’s symphony we cherish
Heralding God’s brightest day
Copyright ©2007 by Duane W. Udd