Friday, September 19, 2008

Modern Love

Nellmezzo

There is a distance which I cannot reach across.
Your words reach me distorted by time
and shapes and garments,
the Palestinian breeze,
have more meaning that the careening
words that crash on Galilee's shore: What did he mean by that?

Why did he choose those words?
that ring so harshly in a cooler clime,
past millennia of time,
as if they could not have changed their meaning
by the time they reach me?

On this distant shore, undreamt by those more present,
only the sense remains; assumptions washed away
by the moving time,
just the bare words remain,
and some of them misleading.

And yet that sense seems to contain
seamless robes, the glance of a dark eye,
a supple body moving down a road with
one backward glance that is made just for me:

As if you had the time and strength to turn back once each millennium
for each of the creatures that follow you, gasping –
and yet they say you do,
and I seem to see you down that road,
turning once for me, and I am not so great a fool
that I would not say "Yes," and grab for your hand once
and never let go.

Urban Poet

There is no time or distance between us and what we love
whose every true expression is the same below among us as above

Whatever we remember of those days in Galilee is constantly repeated
which is why we still are free: select your path and choose your faith, or not

But God will still be waiting at the end
to laugh at us whatever we pretend
as if we couldn't know He always was our friend.

* ****** **** ****** *

It isn't always easy to be living in two worlds

To watch the groundhogs chewing on the grass
and doves aloft, wings flickering as they pass

We battle petty sins for the sake of truth and money
and forget the six days of the week are the same as every Sunday

To intermix the sacred and profane
to raise ourselves up instead of casting blame

You never have to drop it all to run and clasp His hand
just wave hello as He walks by each day. He'll understand.