Shining threads

Shining threads

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Gospel chatter

These people there, discussing a gospel,
the minutiae of words snatched,
second
third hand
from the mouth of a teacher
whom we agree to believe in
to some degree.

I know, says one.
I feel, says another.
I pray, says yet another, and then I walk.

Smiling, the carpenter is nailed to a cross.
The irony is not lost on him,
even though he has moved far from his trade.
(in happier times they shall sing)

Perhaps there is a final meaning,
to be drawn by the hand of Imagination,
raising my body, high on a hill
on these crossed planks.

Now the pain focuses
overtaking sensations of temperature and hunger,
displacing the idle traffic of the mind
so now,
Divine awe displaces all
other distractions
and time itself
is swallowed by the sharp immediacy
in which I AM.

And on either side,
tales not so well told,
those men,
criminals,
die too.
All eyes not on them
yet their pain was very much the same
and in this we share.

Now I can hear a thousand years
and more
of chatter,
of discord,
of attempt
and I wonder,
what shall they remember
and who will tell the tale?

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