Community – Part One

A joyous day! Handshakes, backslaps, Embraces

Or is it 100 days?

Of praise, reassurances, shallow elated smiles,

Simmering with unsaid expectations

Everything said and all jesters read by you and them this day

Are confirmatory like a blind Caesar

Not knowing in the fawning needs, Community Values, and

Hubris is threat

Time passes and visitors come in pairs, in fours, as committees,

As “Key People”

Demands for slow single decisions here, or two there, generous, careful,

The hard and harder

Suddenly the deluge sets in, demands for speed to decide,

Time and choice are no friends

Community wants a Galilean or a father or assurance of certainty

Community – Part Two

Twelve possible roads or solutions amidst unrelenting pressure

But only one choice

Leaving bitter tastes in the mouths eleven smarting advocates

And one plotting in silence for weakness or illness

The hand shakers, the embracers, the backslappers except the very few

Take cool distance

Alone your ears echo with a deep uneasy fear and Roman truths

‘All earthly glory is fading’

Flash of steel through mind of mine

Turning your back

Feeling its jab, pushing it in to the hilt

All the way

Until clinks it does through flesh

Hitting Bone

Reaching back with your dirty hands to see

Your see smiles of many in Dante’s story…… Junius Brutus

Community – Part Three

Crimson drops of silky warmth roll down like

Hot wax to the floor

Stinging, burning, remember nothing good, dogs have gratitude,

Humans have “grace” or its appearance

And dreams of rosy days where once more could hope

To dream or to believe again

To aim high, “to swing for the fences” is indeed noble

But you recall Daedalus’ warning was not just for Icarus

A breath taking wound, once more to breath again

So withdrawing

The cold steel blade it falls out, jaws still aching

Gritting to show no pain

Finally drawing in cool air brings the gifts of the Spirit that soothes

The burn of the sting

It would not be better to be dead yet because now it is

“Time for living well”

Community – Part Four

Ah but those words and images

Finally to forget

To not remember, to not feel that hazy pain,

Flushed faces passing “log-eyed free” judgment to find your speck

Betrayal, like a Joseph who hangs on in faith

With misty nightmares

Seem cut from his soul, his heart, to last a lifetime

But in Joseph’s Egypt all is made well

Free from that turmoil! Joy comes back in the morning

The relief to awake

Clear again, but now only to ‘dream with one eye open’

As the philosopher said

The closed eye dreams

Calls you upward to rise and to believe again

The open eye grounds you

Tethered to humility and gives you clarity to forgive and to dare again

Crowds bring fear and danger of the Mob

But Communities are full of loving embraces and treachery