Holy Week Memorials

I KINGS 2:2 - I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man.

MEMORIAL II (April 1999)

There are fewer men like you
in the world you leave behind.
Before the final day has come
there will be no such men at all.
The world was never made to last.
Progress rolls it forward
to soar around the sun,
and the sun too is a pilgrim.
The universe is a diaspora
of restless stellar nations.
A man's life is an instant.
His mind pops like a spark.
But that spark has power
to pierce eternal shadow.
Rarer is the man who knows
that light was given in love
and is meant to love with.
Instead they grasp at it
to mock the thing that gave it.
Their prideful hands eclipse it.

This is not to ease your waning,
but to mourn it all the more.
It isn't God, the stars or sun
that puts the lights out one by one.


THE LAST OF MY GREAT LOVES

Is not jealous;
She will outwait all the others.

She likes to be played with,
But doesn't care if she's ignored.
She'll walk a few paces behind,
Or hold my hand awhile.
She spies always,
but never tells.

She surprises me in strange places.
I see the white flash of her profile
Across the room.
I didn't used to like that,
But now I mind less.
She grows on me.

She will still want me when you have can't have me,
And she'll lie with me while you walk away.