Come Back Down

Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” But he did not know what he was saying.

- Luke 9:33

a trudge of slobs—loans, budgets, jobs—

to nudge at knobless doors of faith

a cross and quest of bosses, stress,

kids flossed and dressed and pooped and bathed

a test of dross (caressed, then tossed)

by blast and frost of tepid wraiths

a mob of drudges—hobbling, crutched—

till Abba judgeth and He saith

WELL DONE, O DAUGHTER, SON, WELL SOUGHT,

WELL RUN, WELL FOUGHT BEYOND ALL HOPE

and looking back, the crooked track

we took, to hack and flail and grope

our way, is a perilous narrow stair rising through mountains,

through clouds and suns and nebulae, through the curve of time

at every point intersecting every point of every narrow stair

shaping or misshaping every step and turn and landing

where every foot must tread, from the first man’s fruit

to the last man’s interceding breath for Adam in purgation

each mercied act flinging out a cable into the abyss

for the rope-walkers from the storehouse of grace

each meanness sending out a lash for the back at the pillar

and from beneath

claws clutch at ankles from between the rickety stairs

and what missteps and stumbles we are spared

by the sufferings of those who walk the ropes

we may discover only in our own purgation

but what our anguish spares our fellow farers of the steps

we, and they, shall learn together at the peak

beyond both sorrow and gratitude

where the desperate loves of all the days shall merge,

and the one at the pillar shall turn to us,

and we shall be whole enough to see him as he is.

hell’s shackles, hooks, false tracks, false books,

attacks that shook us on the slope,

those throttling tons of rotten scum,

have taught us gumption past our scope

to face the rays of Grace’s gaze,

embrace the blazing heart of Charity—

in His time, when this vision ends

and is a memory of clarity.

Now then, dismissed from trembling bliss,

descend with this Petrine celerity

to daze our race with brazen grace

and raise the chase for Final Verity!