when I said I'd kept them all my life,
He saw the wall of safety I had built
around my life: my wealth, my comfort, shield
against humiliation and decay,
and laid his hand of discourse on those bricks.
Allow me here to tear it all away,
He said, and follow me to deathlessness.
At once I saw myself as stripped and shown
for children's entertainment and for fools.
I saw myself again a shameful child,
embarrassed, disrespected and debased.
These crumbs of good, I thought, had kept me warm
thus far. Why lose this good to grasp at one
that was a promise only, one man's word?
So I declined and went back to my keep
and sat among my rotting palisades.
I later heard the Romans nailed Him dead,
but He revived. If that proves true, I'm lost.
THE EDGE OF LIGHT
A clearing in old growth,
a campfire at its hub,
our tents pitched all around
along the edge of light.
We lay in sleeping bags,
some telling tales
to push the dawning near
the threat of darkened woods.
The stories went around
until we mostly were
agreed that some had shed
new light upon the fire—
redundancy of course.
Some lay along the edge,
while others went too far
into the baffling dark
for us to understand,
and so brought in more dark.
We've moved our tents away
at almost every dusk
to know more of what used
to be the trackless dark.
But some still love the dark
because it seems to them
that it will make them free.
We've had no word from them,
only their gargled pleas.
OUR WAIT FOR THE MESSIAH
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,
not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation
of the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
Like those who waited near where Jesus prayed,
we wait two thousand years and fall asleep.
"And yet we're blest; our lives are short," you say.
Ah but the promise fades, the prospect creeps.
Behind and forward of us stretches time
devoid of Him and of the way made straight.
Our churches try to keep and mime the Christ,
but only Christ himself bears glory's weight.
However, truth may be that Deity
desires in us a faith so large that we
will bear a stretch of seeming-endless wait
for Him, the Bridegroom, and our coming peace.
What good is knowing when He will come back?
Would we rise early then to fill our lamp oil's lack?
2. Assurances
"[Josiah] encouraged them in the service of the house of the Lord."
2 Chronicles 35:2
"We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end."
Hebrews 6:11
ASSURANCES
It's autumn (as the British say) when apples fall
blood-red against the whitened orchard floor,
each one an ineffective sun, too red, too small
for doing more than mime that middling star's one chore.
Enough of that. Those trees will blossom in the spring
and bear their succulence again, but we will not,
except in sons and daughters and their own offspring,
while we take to the soil to rest and then to rot.
Is there another life our souls will wake to find?
We have assurances there is, but then there are
assurances that nothingness awaits our mind,
as black and meaningless as space or fireplace char.
Where lies the fact? Is it where someone died and rose?
If people then were weak as we would be today,
they would not bet their lives on what they just suppose.
On that I'll base belief, and not on what some say.
THE SPEED OF LIGHT
A billion light years is a fantasy
to
