© 2007-2008 John Thornburg
When Parks Are Pentecostal
I.
When Judaea was in foreign hands
and Ovid wrote of changing things;
when London was an infant town
and Romans learned the use of soap;
the Cooper of the barreled vaults of space,
the Jeweler of the far flung skies,
decided to en-flesh.
The one who carried God to term,
who bore the wonder/pain of birth,
not far removed from birth herself,
not expert in the grip of power,
too young to know rapacity,
was terr-amazed, humble-stunned.
But adolescence did not blind her
to the re-arrangement God could do
where humble folks are lifted up
and wealthy ones receive a jolt.
The carols say the manger bed was sweet.
The carol writers have not slept in one.
The gift of God became en-fleshed
with infant breath
despite the ’no-room’ slant of those who saw
another mouth to feed.
A tremor of historic size,
which shook the cosmic walls
and everything between,
sent joy throughout the jeweled skies,
so grand that travelers had to stop and gawk.
And follow.
Silent, tender, awesome.
The universe stood still.
The cosmos did not breath.
A single star halted
And there were no light years,
only light.
II.
But darkness still remained.
The silent night was smashed
with sounds of Herod’s thugs
hunting for a swaddled king.
A frightened father,
warned by Goddreams,
took the tiny, holy thorn in Herod’s side,
and his justice-singing mother,
on an uneasy, unwanted exodus.
And God, who does not have a watch,
but always knows when time is ripe,
loosed the knots of dread
and sent another dream.
This adolescent trust,
this sophomoric faith in dreams
that bear the deepest truth,
became a paving stone
on a most unlikely path.
The path was filled with faithful,
fateful, fatal steps.
The boy who took his place
among rabbinic cedars
and was no seedling;
the one whose questions
went to the base of the well
instead of skimming the top;
the hillside teacher whose holy mathematics
said that full was empty; empty, full;
the one who wept because he knew
that pain cannot be vanquished,
even if death can;
the sand painter who stoked the
fury of the professionally righteous;
the bread breaker who embodied I AM
and gave us a meal where everyone
finds a place card;
the one who could have jumped
the garden wall and saved his skin
but chose instead to save our skin.
And we have loved him,
and mocked him,
and killed for him,
and maimed his words,
and felt his touch,
and fled his call.
III.
The trees of Eden dripped with
the nectar of promise,
and instead of opening our mouths
and drinking in divine sustenance,
we found it sticky, and swabbed our skin
with disdain.
And now we face what is to come.
Will it be like one unending storm
with sheets of woe and strife
so constant that no rainbow can appear
and signal that the liquid death of flood
has given way to olive branch?
Will it be volcano-like,
so violent that centuries of molten hate
which bubbles in the veins of foes
who do not know the genesis
of their abhorrence
will erupt and make a blood-red moon seem pale?
And when our children say,
“Tell us of the lion and the lamb,
who play and tease, and the little one
is not the big one’s meal!”,
will we say,
“No, there is no story like that”?
Are we so far east of Eden
that we do not smell its fruit?
So removed that the flight of eagles
and the quiet propulsion of their wings
is neither seen nor heard?
So distant that dew’s morning kiss
on tall grass has been mown down
and covered with tar and brick
and mini-mart?
Will it be life or half-life?
“Choose this day whom you shall serve..
As for me and my house,
we will be radio-active?”
IV.
Or will there be a day...
when fences are found
by archaeologists,
not built by those who
treasure up their stuff on earth;
when nigger isn’t heard,
when spic is paired with span
and faggot means a bunch of sticks;
when parks are pentecostal
because the play of children
has a language all its own;
when greed is endangered
and every company has a
full time fool
whose job is to help people laugh
and dream
and cry
and hope
and laugh again;
and water hoses cool people off
instead of mowing them down;
and neighborhood means care, not crime,
dreams, not drugs,
gardens, not graves;
when needles are for vaccines;
when clothes are laundered
and money is not;
when music makes people dance,
and films make people think
instead of kill;
when talk is rich, not cheap;
when courtesy, disguised as love,
decides to open up
and lose control;
when bread is broken..
esta es mi cuerpo
when lives are mended..
when freedom,
like a child when the cousins arrive,
springs up and out
and cannot be persuaded
to be calm;
El Señor es contigo
is with you
es contigo
with you
contigo.