Bethesda Trilogy

          I
Hiking to Bethesda

Wind sings,
assembling ancient words
in rustling leaves,
sentences already spoken.

A bell carved of rolled away stone
resonates like an empty tomb,
“holy, holy holy!”.

a flooding river,
a drowning,
a granite avalanche
exhaling “hosanna!”

An eagle soars
over shattered ruins
on updrafts of prophesy
screaming “Get ready!”

a broken high craig
wet with clouds of visitation,
an echo through the rainbow,
peak to peak,
wailing electric blues
of mourning,
trumpet reveilles
of victory.

I walk with you this valley town,
fallen walls carved
with petroglyphs
of gospel and doom,
doorways beckoning
with fealties of skin,
between all the smoking ruins.

                   II
       Waiting In Bethesda

we sit or pace or stand
by the pool of Bethesda,
we are the halt and lame,
the broken ones,
limbering our voices,
strumming softly
on battered guitars,
fingers drumming,
humming, singing
with cracking voices,
fragments of ancient verse,
stringing harmonic fractals
of experimentation,

waiting by the pool,
keeping watch day and night
by turns,
sampling the vacuum
for waves of the Spirit,
astral provoking
with arpeggios of exploration,

waiting in Bethesda
under the marble porch,
small among portico columns,

waiting beside the pool,
prayer rhythms
rising and falling,
breathing, sleeping,
by the pool where stars glitter,
the sun and silent moon,

waiting for the angel to come,
to stir the water in our souls,
scatter the reflections,
give us a living song!


                   III
        The Song Comes

Skimming vortex forth on seas of sound,
streaming from safe harbours of tradition,
winged sails fill with spirit winds,
soar over the harbour,
Bethesda’s agitated pool,
rising through startled flocks of brazen bells
in deafening carillon
from a congregation
of parochial belfries,
whose sudden commotions
scatter flocks of armoured predators,
heavily accustomed  to ecclesiastical feasts
of slow thickened blood.

Sailing weightless from Bethesda,
as one divinely called by name,
sailing swiftly from Bethesda,
as an arrow sent,
a radiantly singing bride,
her sparkling veil raining liquid fire,
sowing fields of blossoming light,
encircling in dizzy orbit
a dark bewildered world.