Into The Quiet

Into the Quiet

(“When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.” John 6:15)

I have seen men on cable tv with atrocious haircuts (and women too)
speaking for God the Creator of All, the Potentate and Holy One,
Invisible, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Who speaketh unto us
in antique English like Shakespeare. There is a reason students shudder
at both Titus Andronicus and the KJV of Lamentations.

Could I understand κοινή Greek commonly, I could dispense
with tv translations altogether. But that is another poem which
must wait until I learn to translate my own stubborn phrases into
a language dead enough that none could critique my work.

I have seen graves with green unsettled. Half a dozen, an hour before dark,
and a day after the cancer won the struggle for the man’s last breath, the grass
hugging the sod with the shine from too many shoes shuffling a certain prayer
they were told would bring the widower’s husband back.

I have seen tv men swear to resurrection, prayer that brought the hands
disrupting the dirt piled above. The man climbed out, without stepstool
or directions, to find the world the same as it was the day his respirations
ceased.

I have seen tv men (and women too), or those with no access to air time who
snatch their lucky anointing because they lived long enough to finally receive the
votes they needed to give them the freedom to tell the unheeding
how God’s creeds are meant to be obeyed. Shame for the backward glances
and unanswered mail when a voter needs an answer.

Oh, but You, Son of Man and of God, eschew hairdos and personal assistants,
but find Your time alone on hillside fog and morning with Father to hear
how Your kingdom comes
without popular vote or golden thrones. And though its sorrow must
waft like incense through every fiber of Your humanity, the cross is
Your throne and our misdeeds Your crown.

I heard that you told those closest to you, “I am sending you in the same way
the Father sent me,” and I always took it to mean less self-seeking and more
quiet mountain retreating. But I have seen tv men (this is poetry, so I admit
my license usage) who love themselves and the stage, and I could be one.

Lest I forget, the sins that crowned Your crumpled brow, I will quietly
hope to follow well, and, not before the crowds, but before my King,
I will
bow.