Reckless Poet

      Oceans of Security

They all appear so happy,
with their smiles and laughter
            icing all the
joking and the playing
            as if the moment fills to bursting
with their circumstantial pleasures.

My winding mind will wander,
            as they play and dance and chortle.
I sit alone, a silly fish
            with bursting eyes a-goggling
and a bleating bubble
            passing quite routinely through my lips.

Are they travellers, every one?
            or empty shells
            of washed up clams,
                        drifting as the tide comes
            in and out,
with little hope for change
            and losing track
                        of where in life
they're really at--

I catch the tide and drift to shore,
aware of tumbling conversations,
            lilting demonstrations
of the reasonably content.
The rocks are sharp upon the land,
            a world not made for fish.
A gasp for air
            a flip,
              then two,
will take me back to places
            where the loving one embraces
all the warmth of life
            back into
all the spaces of my soul.

The clams continue singing
as I hear the laughter ringing,
and my tiny heart will ache again
            to join their manic song.

But the water knows me,
it's wholeness is what holds me,
And freedom lies around the sea
            where oceans of security
will guide my wandering heart
            to heaven's door.

© Ephraim Risho, 1997

 

Rubber Arms

I think I love nobody,
  just a rubber monkey
    stretchy play
  but nothing really real.

I say I love you
  plastic words
you smell my stony
  heartless charms
and even in your arms
  I lie without a pulse
    within
  pretend and think
somehow I could be
  something different
I wonder if I
     risked the certainties
                and comforts
         giving all to One
             who made it
      played it
          incarnated
        came in human form
                  though holy
       gave and bled
                  and cried
        his earthy fears and
                  pains along with
        rebels, Galilean fools
              who sought the world
         and found it
                 in a
                    mustard seed
         the Grandeur of
               a massive God
       bound up in
           simpletons and
              thieves
       lousy rubber monkeys
          useless
       trashly
          ugly ducklings
      set so staunchly
         on our ways
      and rarely pausing
       long enough  
             to see the truth,
I wonder
  could there be
    some hope for
  me?

How can a rubber-man
  get out of quicksand
      with his puppet
  arms
      no strength
            no hope
      no chance to
            climb on free?

Or is that why
    he came,
  for fools and
    plastic ponies
  chumps who
    ever only solely
       need a saviour?

©Ephraim Risho, December 29, 2003