Poem for Mark 6, the sixth Sunday after Pentecost

The sun shines here

Like nowhere else

Amid the fields and streams

So familiar

---- to the feet of my youth

as I come over the hill

and see the village

about it’s business

---- as it had been forever

I knew now what it was

I wanted to say

------------ and do

I was aware of who I was

And who I was to be

And I wanted to share

---- this vision of life

with these

---- the ones who had filled my being

with fond memories

of a time

---- when life seemed simpler

---- with less evil in the world

thoughts and memories

swirl through my mind

as I come into the village of my youth

wanting

with all that is in me

to integrate the reality of what was

with the reality

---- that had come to be mine

and with that

I went to the center of my life

And this village

And spoke

Of the message

I had come to bring to the whole world

Starting here in the place

---- where I also started

and as I spoke the new truth

---- of life

the faces I had hoped to save

---- changed

as the walls went up

seeing only the memories

of what was

unable to change and grow

as I had

for they had grown used to

what had been

and therefore

unable to see

a future that included their own

and as the walls

turned to violence

I wept

At the hardness

That is the human heart