After the Transfiguration

Why don't I look into your gentle eyes?
I'd climb the mount to see the sun arise
Before us all, but that is not my call.
A man, but not a hero, longs with you.
I'm flinching, for the work I need to do
To see a face attends me in the place
I live or leave. There's nothing to be "found."
Do we forget that love is all around
And sin upon the Spirit long since come?
I need the spirit of a Blake or Beat,
The hip and punk, for all my sight to meet
The cuckoo clouds that shield the poor from proud
Right now. A mystery, a vision? Please!
When I can greet my neighbors, enemies
And demons with a kneel, it will reveal.
A humbler man than I would be less vexed,
Give smile for smile and laugh for laugh,
Then rest in peace because his sorrows find surcease.
Our ends have been foretold. To hear it once
Should strip us free of envy of the ones
So God-gone lucky, Peter, James, and John.
But what do you do when nothing's going on?

***

This is a poem I wrote on Aug. 8, 2002, three days before leaving New York for Baltimore, to begin a year of volunteer service with other young adults under the supervision of the Capuchin Franciscan friars. This poem, despite its flaws, remains a song of myself. It is, in uncanny ways, still a sharp statement of my personal identity, my religious aspiration, and my spiritual desire.