AUGUST 2004 - ISSUE 3 - ISSN 1448 - 632

Trinity 2

The breeze lifts me

The wind carries me

A breathless soaring

Gently touched turned ruffled

The wind guides my descent

The breeze cushions my fall, and

I am bedded a moment until

The earth screams.

Trinity 3

The water circles the stone

And the stone descends deep and deeper

Deeper than I can go

It hits bottom and begins its slow tumbling

To be smoothed simple, perfect

So to fit some place, everyplace

Trinity 4

The sun's light

Searches through the trees –

It is a warm and gentle day

And the young sapling moves to and fro

Leafing is natural and necessary

But there is much to learn

So leaning into the sun

The sapling mimics the strength of the elders

And all the while a slow breeze moves with the light

And no leaf is left untouched. 

Trinity 5

We must work, she says.

So he goes to the field, its broken yield,

And chooses a piece, enough for two;

It sparks of nothing he knows,

And will no more, for how can his

Small hands work life in its twisted core.

With all his strength he slams

The wood against the ground, and then the air,

The field again, and then the bush in his way,

The bush sways but will not yield.  His hands sting, yet

He is not done. He grabs the bush's thin trunk,

But is seems like his father's hand, and he falls against it.

He presses his face against his father's hand. 

In death there is stillness but it is rough as life.

It smells of wood and it could still surely snap the apron,

Create a cloud of dust in the air, and send his son scurrying.

The boy presses harder against the trunk and it weeps too,

For all life knows embrace.

Oh, God. Show me my father!

I can mend this wood. It is not dead! It is not dead!

My father says nothing is ever truly dead. He told me once to watch

As mother stitched life into plain cloth, and I did! There was a single lily,

Then two, three, and they grew in number, so effortlessly, until they could fill

A palace. And wood is the same. Wood is the same! 

Oh, father! Oh, God! The chatter in the tree echoes the boy's voice.

Hidden among its branches they quarrel, so much to say: There is too little food,

No water. We are prey, just prey, no more, and all this boy can do is whine!

Does he not know we're here?  That we are frightened too?

But enough is enough! And the wind firmly slaps the truck a single blow

And there is utter silence. The boy presses his face into the silence and weeps.

The wind slows on its way down to caress the boy's head.

It gently touches his back and feels his chest heaving. It has borne a smell not unlike a carpenter's apron. The boy leans back into his father's lap and strong huge fingers trace the nape of his neck, pinch the lobes of his ears, and then pull both cheeks to force a parroted grin. His mother looks up and smiles as though seeing this for the first time. They laugh so loud the laughter fills the shop and bounds out beyond their alley.

The breeze comes about and raises the boy's chin,

And a warm light approaches, bending the branches aside, to reach the boy.

And then the boy clearly sees his father,

Wood dust clings to his beard. The boy leans forward to rejoice, and then to cry,

Trying to hold his heart in his chest. But the boy knows the moment, knows

There is work to do. He leans down to bring the piece of wood to his father,

To be told what it might become.

Jack Justice is a pharmacist by profession. He has a doctorate in pharmacy, an MBA, and an MA (Theol),gained via online courses, from ACU . He has published a number of poems in a variety of journals, and now, as a semi-retired grandfather, believes that the richness of trinitarian thought will keep him busy for years to come.

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