Death,
if seen,
then,
now burns alive within.

Unapproachable,
then,
now leads,
by hand.

Mysterious,
yet,
to those whom it was given,
now revealed,
to the ignorant, who never desired it.

That which baptised the Earth,
then,
now,
a spring that waters Jerusalem.

A photon has no time.
Here and there, instantly.
No distance too, when in the light.
All is one, one is all,
                                     eternally.

If blessedness is a choice,
who chooses to be accursed?

What need for God,
since we bless ourselves;
by the strength of our arms,
and the cunning of our wits;
but that they remain
strong and sharp even with age,
and that our store houses,
are not burned down or robbed,
and that Evil be kept far from us.

Job was blessed of God.
Evil touched him to his bones,
His storehouses burnt down,
His sons and daughters massacred.
Wishing death rather than life,
but enough life and fear remain,
to know torment, pain and suffering,
and to question agonizingly without answers;
accused falsely by unwise friends,
who spoke the wind as if its wisdom;
and to live days without end in sight.

We bless ourselves
as we count blessings:
Beholden to the flesh,
its desires and fears.
As the blind,
content not to fall,
but destined to fly
and see the unseen
and be the unimaginable.

Sword of Ishmael, robed in Assyria's mantle,
Consecrated of God, Prince of princes,
A Destroyer: the executioner of judgements.
A thorn driven deep into the heart of Jerusalem,
Tempting violent men, who pride in their strength,
as Excalibur and the Gordian Knot challenged
Arthur and Alexander.

Son of Ham, slave of slaves, reigned.
Humiliated, but unrepentant, defiant, and unfearing,
They asked for one of theirs to be king.
Saul, anointed and prophesied, crowned king.
David, feigned madness, fought for the Philistines.

Our souls spoke, not in words,
but in emotions deeply aroused,
in the dream language of
fragmentary fleeting sights,
disjointed leaps, even bizarre things.

But of things only between us,
never spoken of, at all, in all of life,
neither known to anyone else,
mutually shared, unacknowledged,
in our deepest and most intimate selves.