by Lloyd Haft
(8) [Matthew 16: 13-19; John 2: 14-21]
Who shall we say it is
we are becoming?
a witness only?
reborn only,
living again the life a dead one did?
Can flesh and blood believe they are
the longed-for, the awaited?
And after all the years the temple’s waited –
who could see the body
standing here and resurrected
that sold itself so long,
paraded here in hoofs and pigeon wings?
(9) [Luke 10: 17-20; Matthew 18: 12-14]
Better than scaring devils out of heaven,
stronger than stamping poison bugs to earth
is knowing our becoming,
even if it’s devils,
beetles we’ve become.
Slowly as the ugliest
of what’s along with us
we go.
Nothing stays beyond us
where the mountain’s under us.
(10) [Mark 10: 32-34]
Ever going, bound for the city of peace, comes
the human, the child.
Threading the way through chasers,
hecklers
following and faulting from behind.
They’d put the child behind them,
make it tarry, talk.
They’d love to see this baby dead.
(11) [Matthew 21: 23-27]
Ever the heckler’s question –
out of whom, and in whose name
the one we are is coming?
(Every answer asks again.)
When those who went before us stood
between the waves and prophesied
the child was yet to come –
did heaven hear their hope?
did earth?
And yet the hope,
the flow comes on.
(12) [Matthew 23: 37-39]
Not in the heavy shadows
of a peace that cannot waken
comes the one we are becoming.
We come in longing’s name –
the only one that still will sound
where all the walls are gone.
(13) [Matthew 26: 26-29; I Corinthians 11: 26]
The one we are becoming
takes us, holds us up
and broken as we are,
feeds us through all falling,
all becoming:
all of this is body.
One becoming breathes with us,
brimming, breaking over
into heart on heart that cups the blood,
eye on eye that sees,
bodies,
knows the one becoming.
(14) [Matthew 16:21]
Joined, bound to know,
to carry and to bear.
Held to the death that brings together
into the wider knowing we become.
(15) [Matthew 27: 51-53]
Out of the graves we stride wherever
the veil of the holy of holies
no longer holds –
no longer holds together.
It is together or it is no hold.
Together where they told us we were dead.
Where the one becoming breathes with us,
leaves the sky behind
and falls to us, arisers
in the richer, deeper vault,
our widening, our Now.
