The following poem is one I have been working on for
quite some time. I guess I have been
timid about sharing it due to its bizarre nature and its strange language. Much of the poetry I have written over the
years, like this one, has been inspired by incidents in the New Testament. But this one might take some getting used to,
so I strongly suggest that you not stop with only one read-through. Give it a second and maybe third reading in
the hopes of it becoming clearer and/or more meaningful. It covers more territory than at first may be
apparent.
Mark me well, name me not.
Only know how my paltry life
ceased,
when I saved the day and the
same day saved me.
Millions of grains of cosmic
truth assembled
with five thousand I was to
feed.
A tough Prophet’s act to
follow, yet I became
the unwitting subject of
abundance.
Mark me well, name me not.
Only know where I’ve been,
where I go,
what I know, what I am –
a progeny of soil and water,
land and sea,
grain and sperm, a fertilized
egg
in the ovum of a little known
place.
Before that day,
mindless morsels in bondage
to human appetite,
mere loaves and fishes
without even a pauper’s praise.
This to remain, but for the
grace of someone
building a new Kingdom of
Light.
Mark well the airtight refuge
I took from him
in a traveler’s pouch.
Know, if you will, the field
of force he unleashed,
laying siege to my cloister.
I saw him not as he harvested
thousands of grains of truth
in his teeth. The scandal of
the man, the Prophet, the
Kingdom Builder,
the Truth Reaper, lost to me
in my functional innocence.
The plentiful harvest, hands
that labored in the ground,
the plow that split the
furrow –
I was of the fruit they had
borne. And now
a harvest in the making that
would feed forever
the sons and daughters of
earth!
A seed must fall into the
ground and die to give birth.
I had sprung from its core,
and only he who now
stirred above me knew my
worth –
the Lord of the harvest yet
to be.
I marked myself well –
what I was – lackluster
crumbs to sustain
lackluster life, bartered for
a peasant’s pittance,
fated to be human refuse.
What was I in my meagerness
at such a
cosmic renaissance? Out of my element
I awaited the sentence of
human forgetfulness
And yet, of me he spoke, as
of the seed that could move
a mound of rock and return
its abundance to the sower.
I knew not that I was of such
ancestry as had given the Word
its flesh, such flesh and
such Word as now shed its light
upon the living and the dead.
Then into the void, as
pebbles upon still water, there fell
the murmurs of a milling
crowd, the shuffling of feet
uncertain of home and what
somehow I knew to be
the invisible soul’s longings
laid bare
amidst spectator hunger and
ambivalence.
And I heard my summons,
the curl and crackle of the
cloth about me, leaving me bare
before air and soil and water
and twilight chill and
expectant throngs of humanity
awaiting my pleasure.
“Cover me! Cover me!” I would have cried, but heaven
had not made me the gift of a
voice, at other times
so unenviable.
It mattered not. I was spared from attrition
by the Prophet’s genius
stroke.
Destiny marked the place, and
I, if the attributes of
flesh and blood had yet become mine, would have known
to call this repast by one of
love’s many names,
my then throbbing elements
borne up in hands reaching
into heaven.
This one who placed himself
above the mollification of
the mass mind, this healer
out of the world, valued me
above the genre of raw human
necessity, made me a party
to his compassion, to
intangibles I would never perceive,
tangibles to become
reconciled with intangibles
all about me.
For all this I was rendered
immortal!
The five thousand, unmarked
by destiny, nameless in
their mass generality, not
perceiving, partook of me, and
began their mortal trek
homeward. They saw not that I then
passed into history to
witness in their stead
last Passovers and betrayals,
crucifixions and Eucharists,
vow takings and idolatries of
sacred covenants.
Mine is the miracle of
odyssey,
to be touched by more than I
could ever touch,
to bear no cross, only a sign
read by some,
of things taken in and
recomposed to embellish
the weak and the hollow,
of life in substance and
fullness.
Mortification – ’tis beyond
my simple extremity,
yet now I tear apart, I scatter
wide,
in tempo with hearts that
break for disease and distress.
Arms to embrace – they are
denied me, yet now
I delight to be dropped on
mercy missions penetrating
the wide world. To love and befriend, win or gain favor –
such gifts outside my purview.
Yet now nations call to
me. I confer with them
across their dinner tables.
But for those in high places,
draining
the oceans and granaries of
the world, for those
crazed in their gluttony,
fouling nature’s nest and
crippling my kindred, for the
eat-meat-greet mobs,
in their gusto mistaken for
dedicated enclaves,
I have nothing – no tears to
weep. I must defer to
the better breed of flesh and
blood. It is for them to
cut a delicate path through
callousness, extravagance,
monopoly and greed. I am otherwise enjoined
by powers impervious to human
loss and shall be,
as long as Earth is a
sovereign substance in living space.
Mark me well, name me not.
Only know where I have been
since that day, what I
sew and reap evermore.
I answer the squalling
summons of hunger and need, but
I hunger no more myself. Before soil and water and
expectant throngs I move and
germinate and wax
mutely eloquent, no longer
jealous of any act I must follow,
favored to pass, in search of
other multitudes, through
all that stands or crawls,
while prophets and peacemakers hold
my intangible worth in escrow
for the millions yet unborn.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To know
about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.
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