POETRY
Children
Are listening, so
Put a filter on your tongue
Are watching, so
Scrub your actions
With soap
Some
Have daddies who love, so
Strangers, do not touch
Have mothers who love more, so
Don’t, if you value your vitals
And a pain-free life
All
Belong to God, so
Ponder what Christ said
A millstone about your neck
Cast into the depths of the sea
Where lurks Leviathan
Year of Jubilee
What did we expect after 2000 years?
Angelic choirs, Satchmo on trumpet,
Mozart at the piano, Elvis singing lead?
Waiting for hours on stone steps
Worn smooth by Roman sandals
Stained by Jewish blood,
We could almost see beyond
The Judean Wilderness,
Charlton Heston, his staff outstretched,
The sea parting.
What our jaded eyes saw
Across the span of the Temple Mount
A company of priests,
Robed and phylactyred,
Rushing back and forth
In front of the Western Wall
Blowing shofars, sounding not at all
Like the Trump of God
But rather the tooting
Of a grade school Kazoo band.
Not one scruffy dove
Landed on anyone’s shoulder.
What God saw
Jesus in the Garden,
Sweating drops of blood,
As he prayed for the flesh
That encased the Messiah
And for the souls of all mankind.
Most brutal of deaths, the tomb
The rising again of the Nazarene,
Titus’ destruction of Jerusalem
In crumbled stone, fire and blood.
The Jewish nation over the centuries
In diaspora, ridicule, inquisition
Death camps and crematoriums,
Through it all, keeping Covenant with God
“Next year in Jerusalem,”
Who brought them together
Once again as a nation
Keeping Covenant with Israel
What God expects.
Keep blood Covenant
With my Son,
The Covenant of Calvary
And the empty tomb.
Oh, yes. The tough one,
“Become as little children.”
Robert Funderburk was born by coal oil lamplight in a farmhouse near Liberty MS; graduated from LSU (1965) and was a SSgt in the USAFR (1965-1971). He has had 17 novels, 35 poems, one chapbook and one short story published. Teaching 4- and 5-year-olds in Sunday School for the past 20 years has been a passion and blessing for him. Lives with his wife, Barbara, on 50 acres of wilderness in Olive Branch, LA.
Photo credit: “Jesus comforting the children,” taken from James Shepard via Flickr.com.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 