PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Get hold of yourself.  Be no longer troubled.
The worldly wisdom that has long been yours
(in generous political profusion)
suggests an obvious, final solution---
(as obvious as that nose on your stubbled
face)---for which you need only a first date.
These men are gullible:  mere foreigners,
and neither Caesar's spies nor messengers,
nor exiles seeking rest, nor predators
stalking flesh; but scholars---astronomers,
asking local directions.  (Oddly, one
resembles---with some age---Caesarion,
had he lived; Cleopatra's erstwhile son.
She, too, despised your brash brutality
and anxious over-eagerness to please.
And yet, shrewish in shrewd hypocrisy---
as she manipulated Antony's
marked prediliction for the hot attraction
to naked nuance in adultery,
Egypt's last queen could not change History's
plans for you.  Neither chance, fortune, nor fate---
which you revere as gods in trinity
over your life---gave her the satisfaction
to deal you death with swift delivery.
Take heart---even though brimming with deceit
(as Jeremiah said)---receive your guests,
and put to them this simplest of requests:
could they disclose when they first saw that star?
The site they seek must be in Bethlehem,
so Micah said, and not Jerusalem;
a walking distance, not so very far.

Starward

[jlc]