The earth breathes in a heavy sigh
over the mountain tops to the great swamps
as the sun rises to its setting,
daily, she rises, daily
to offer a fitting praise to our Heavenly Father.
O Father. You who are near, nearer to me
nearer to me than my over methodical mind knows.
Where is God? Where is He? Our Friend asks in a soft voice.
Do we care? Do you care?
Bustling, rustling over the hills, the sea,
the concrete pavements where my fathers trod and
your fathers trod and his fathers trod .
Tear down, build up. The arrow shot in the dark.
You tear down, you build up and you fall
fall again, into the fallacy, time and again.
“Our Father's were fools” Our friend says
(Who's this friend, it is you, it is me.)
“Fools… we have advanced…”
O Friend, thou art the fool,
say you love Thee, but thou art the fool
As you bash the idols of ages past,
failing to understand the slight glimmer,
the glitter, of beauty, of truth, of reality
amidst the good-intention falsehood.
O Fool, my friend,
take pure Aeneas and learn from him,
if you may shift your eyes, for one lonely second
away from your smutty, fleeting distraction.
Anchises, before Sicily had claimed his bones
was not left behind in Troy
rather our Aeneas, took upon himself the burden
to carry his beloved father away
away, from the fiery ruins of a time,
between one time and another.
(whether one looks back and says, “Thank God”
or “God help us,” it makes no difference)
Earth you were there from the beginning.
You watched our comings and our goings,
our genius and our stupidity.
Men who said
Rome shall never die
and men who say this today.
Man, why do we reject your dead? The same dead
whose rotting flesh made fertilizer for
your most spawning ground.
Made mourners weep and hoped for more.
Why do we reject our dear Anchises…
for an impious devotee…
…the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings,