A different third hour

It was nine o'clock and they thought we were drunk,
the only conventional explanation for
the difference.

I was a rustic fisherman, with nimble fingers tying knots
and cursing the luck of barren nights ...
now I am a theologian
with inexorable rhetoric.
I sing the new song
that preserves difference
but surmounts distance
in a Word. 

I was a wealth-protecting publican, really a tax-collector
who knew how to calculate funds and derivatives to pad my accounts
while the houses of brothers withered in the hot wind
of occupation ...
now I am the almoner who gives to all the poor,
builds hospitals for all the sick and hurt,
I drain all accounts and cancel every interest,
less than zero.

I was a swordsman, an insurrectionist,
a shouter on the barricades, a revolutionary,
hand me your newest gun in every generation ...
now I am a pacifist
and a forgiver of all past insults and injuries,
I drain all history and the chains of vendetta,
my anger is quenched
on a single tear of grace. 

I was a modern, speaking in the lesser tongues
of thrill
and loved my feelings and bourgeois comforts
of chips and beers and points at games
and politicians who made me mad ...
now I attend a church of empty pews,
listening to the true new song,
getting metaphysical,
Trinitarian,
for once,

and speaking the word, finally,
of love. 

Comments

[Darlene]

And yet we have many who bear the name of Christian, yet love their feelings and bourgeois comforts crediting God for these very things.

O, that I might escape the lure of ephemeral materialism that saturates the ethos of our present day. And along with that the admiration given to subjective opinions esteemed as truth, yet hollow in substance.

[Joseph Brown]

Beautiful.