NEAR KINNERET
This is that ancient harvest night.
You bring a refugee inside
– might be an angel of God –
& find participation is the true delight.
The otherness-&-love of God
deflects the local stream
from its own banks. A dream
intrudes – disturbs each land of Nod.
Bright Dante, growing gaunt & gray
steps into a seashell
– beached, like him, in exile.
Tall haunted shades of Sant’Apollinare
gaze, raining compassion
from wide almond eyes
like springs, like Beatrice’s...
he feels at home. O prodigal son!
Poema sacra must be reconfigured.
Maximus in prison
by the Black Sea... vision
like shadow of the Argo soared
– an Easter visitant, come dawning
far above Firenze, or
this rusted blue-red frenzy
ferrying Rubicon (Cain-abling)
& you are weeping, you are smiling
far beyond sacrifice,
climbing that hill-face
near Kinneret (life-reconciling).
11.2.19
