Marked

As this is the first post of this blog, I begin with intuition and not design.  What will it become?  I do not know.  So I will begin with a poem I wrote a couple of years ago that brings together a couple of threads that are fraying themselves in my awareness today.  First, Marcus Aurelius.  Second, Easter.  And third, Katrina, which floods into the poem, midway.  But fourth, my sons are wanting me to go with them to the pool.  Enough of writing and fiddling with setting up this blog. 

Marked

Jesus stood among our diseases

and mixed sweet concoctions of word

and wheat and set them before us

to eat without complaint.  We all

believed what he said, but what he did

seemed intended to amaze and surprise

only the good among us.  “Hurry,”

he would say, “You have so little

time to lose your chains.”  He perplexed

the rich, rejected our offers

for easy credit; laughed at tax

disguised as handouts for the poor,

those hidden, stranded on rooftops

in hurricanes of our neglect.

Stealing what tiny craft survived,

he rowed into the rising waters

and found the frightened with brilliant

steady light.  We thought him a salesman

in Sears suits passing out coupons

for the circus of perverted saints.

But Peter observed what he knew

was miracle:  The morning bells

were ringing, and a liar found

the ground to kneel upon and pray.