Mistaken Vintage!

A poem for the Feast of Pentecost

 

 

Fire And Wine

 

And then it happened...

We hung around for safety

above ground level

the clamouring souls outside

a packed embolus

fain clutching our feet

as if they craved live contact

with celebrity

and sought a fragment of him

we could not furnish

that desert instant

the Word became illumined

sparks ran among the

stubble of our deadlocked heart

bursting occlusion

We recalled the phrase

God is a consuming fire

We had thought it meant

wrath; titanic sacrifice

on our part, not his

 
Holocausts were done!

The quality of mercy

much spoken of was

now eternally unstrained

its current flowing


This was the God of

Shadrach and his noble breed

passing through furnace

defying wild destruction

unseared and annealed

 
It was the God of

Moses and the burning bush

bridling lakes of fire

of brimstone and Gehenna

passionate in peace

 
Divine transfusion

filling us with sentience!

We rose up as one

the livid fear doused and gone

We had to tell it!

 
So high on rapture

we gave the false impression

the wine of Bacchus

irrigated our parched veins

Mistaken vintage!

 

  

 

From JERICHO ROSE, Songs from the Wilderness (collection in preparation).