PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The road received me with countless others,
as it did that week---but that was somehow different.
The garden where He taught, beneath the shade;
the brook Cedron, where we splashed in the afternoon,
where He liked to cool His feet after the hot stones
of the pavement around the Temple:
in those places, He made our spirits soar
(even ours, although we once resided in Decapolis)
by making the Scriptures come alive in the way He spoke them.
He had told us, more than once, He must die in Jerusalem.
And we pretended, now, not to believe Him,
we who had, once, so intensely believed Him . . .
 
Starward
 
[jlc]                                                    

[to Jim H---Teacher;
but more importantly, Mentor;
and most importantly, Friend---
I dedicate this Antioch poem.]

"And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."
---Acts 11:26

Go out as far as Antioch,
and see what faith they bear
into that city.  Doubters mock,
but something great is there.

Though it may seem a long, hard trip---
leaving Jerusalem---
still, you will find sweet fellowship
in Antioch, with them.

Hear how the name of Jesus Christ
now fills their daily talk
(for saving faith, alone, sufficed
to start them on their walk).

From Antioch, they travel forth
because their souls are stirred.
From East to West and South to North,
they preach the Holy Word.

Go out among that happy flock.

Go out as far as Antioch.

Starward
 
[jlc]                                                    

I like to watch spring's breezes break apart
the last of winter's dark and chilly clouds.
Likewise, the Gospel wind moved through my heart
to sweep away the storms, cobwebs, and shrouds
of sin that, thirty-six years, occupied
my life.  I thank God that I had not died
before His grace cleared up my spiritual skies.
Now I can look up Heavenward with eyes
that have been born again.  Each day and night,
I follow Christ in old paths and good ways.
Nor do I fear to cross through mists or haze,
because I walk by faith and not by sight.
I know Whom I believe, and fix my gaze
on Jesus:  He is all I need for light.
 

Starward
 
[jlc]                                            

Weary with Rome's administrative law,
he recollects, now, what he once forgot
(but stored in sheltered cellars of his mind):
his once, and chaste, beloved's shy, bare feet.
He thinks of her, shoeless, and that first awe
(long lost amid Rome's justice and its lot
of work) rises again, now unconfined,
to rouse his faith and make his verse complete.

From Heaven's site, she witnesses that he
has brought her presence to his poetry.
Unshod, demure, cast in the choicest role,
she frolics in the pageant of his soul.
Her memory inspires his heart, brim-full,
to sing the praise of Christianity.                      

(to Burton Mack)

[after Luke 10:1]

"He sent us out ahead of Him; and we---
"to make improvement on flawed memory---
"set down what He had taught in Galilee
"(and His Words seemed to many, as to me,
"as if the very Heaven's poetry
"had come to us).  But men are frail, you see;
"and we were not a few, but Seventy;
"selected to speak unilaterally
"about Him.  (Common sense and history
"show that remembering an incident
"is easier than sentences' content,
"for words are lively.)  Thus, before we went
"each made a copy of one master scroll
"to keep the message accurate and whole."

Starward

[*/+/^]

Outside the rich man's gate, he made no fuss.
We know him as our Brother, Lazarus.

The rich man screams eternally in hell.
But his name?---none of the saved, elect, can tell.
 
Starwardist
 
[jlc]                                                      

Not knowing Who, now, hung upon that cross,
the soldiers diced, beneath, for gain or loss.
In History's most momentous circumstance,
they played their flesh's game of trivial chance.

J-Called