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we pursued was truth.

      When we were there, we found our goal

      Lodged in a kind of booth.

      Down we dismounted, knelt and gave

      Frankincense, gold and myrrh.

      Herod demanded we report,

      But we did not concur.

      We then returned to our homelands,

      Better for having gone,

      All of us changed by truth we'd seen:

      Light of the coming dawn.

      MATURING

      Each day means fewer things that he can do.

      Some years ago he lost his sense of smell,

      and now he hardly bends to tie his shoe.

      You understand. I'm sure that you can tell

      he's getting old, he's edging toward his grave.

      Slave traders aren't enticed; he wouldn't sell.

      I won't say he is cowardly or brave—

      he's just uninterested in pain or fear.

      He's lived from birth inside an autoclave.

      But now his heart is cooked, his eyes are blear,

      and he has seen some things he'll never say,

      except by tangents, from this biosphere.

      One thing he still delights in is to play

      while kneeling with the children as he'd pray.

      BIRTHPLACES OF IMMORTALITY

      Cities and hamlets that lay wherever the Greeks

      pronounced their Hellenic language claimed

      to be birthplace and home of the father of poets, great Homer:

      Chios, Salamis in Cyprus, Ionia, Smyrna,

      and even Egyptian Thebes. But a man can be born

      in a single location alone, and so one speaks true,

      while the others are wishful pretenders who wink at the truth.

      So do the tumbled adorings of India lie,

      and the horse and the flame of the Persians, the disengagement

      of Buddha in China, the worship of trees and of animals,

      Arabic efforts to bolster their racial esteem—

      lies to acquire for themselves the home-place of God.

      But He broke into time at a single location, a Man,

      perturbing the ones who, if able, had sent Him back home.

      THE CAMEL AND THE NEEDLE'S EYE

      The rich young man speaks

      I have more sheep and goats, more houses, slaves

      than Job before disaster laid him low.

      My wife is out of Solomon and bears

      a stair-step line of children to my fame.

      But here and there I see a boil upon

      the smooth skin of my life, a sign that all

      may one day, in a sudden wind, collapse

      and leave me naked, unprotected, shamed.

      I woke some nights ago and felt the hands

      of doubt, of indecision, of my youth

      that gripped my neck and told me I am small.

      When dawn returned (how long the night can be)

      I checked my wealth and saw fragility.

      So when I heard a teacher was nearby

      I went to him and caught Him on the point

      of leaving us. I wanted some assurance

      that my acts, which held to Moses' law,

      were adequate to buy eternal life.

      He seemed at first to ratify my goal

      by listing those commands I had obeyed.

      But when I said I'd kept them all my life,

      He saw the wall of safety I had built

      around my life: my wealth, my comfort, shield

      against humiliation and decay,

      and laid his hand of discourse on those bricks.

      Allow me here to tear it all away,

      He said, and follow me to deathlessness.

      At once I saw myself as stripped and shown

      for children's entertainment and for fools.

      I saw myself again a shameful child,

      embarrassed, disrespected and debased.

      These crumbs of good, I thought, had kept me warm

      thus far. Why lose this good to grasp at one

      that was a promise only, one man's word?

      So I declined and went back to my keep

      and sat among my rotting palisades.

      I later heard the Romans nailed Him dead,

      but He revived. If that proves true, I'm lost.

      THE EDGE OF LIGHT

      A clearing in old growth,

      a campfire at its hub,

      our tents pitched all around

      along the edge of light.

      We lay in sleeping bags,

      some telling tales

      to push the dawning near

      the threat of darkened woods.

      The stories went around

      until we mostly were

      agreed that some had shed

      new light upon the fire—

      redundancy of course.

      Some lay along the edge,

      while others went too far

      into the baffling dark

      for us to understand,

      and so brought in more dark.

      We've moved our tents away

      at almost every dusk

      to know more of what used

      to be the trackless dark.

      But some still love the dark

      because it seems to them

      that it will make them free.

      We've had no word from them,

      only their gargled pleas.

      OUR WAIT FOR THE MESSIAH

      We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,

      not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation

      of the dawn.

      Henry David Thoreau

      Like those who waited near where Jesus prayed,

      we

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