TRINITY SIX

The child lies against its mother's breast, a soft 

And purposeful truth.

It softens the light and holds the aroma of milk.

There is no more to know for the moment.

But there are sounds, some comforting, some not, and

Movement, some unthreatening, some not, and

Touch, sometimes exquisitely gentle, sometimes fully

Human: gentle and rough.

It is a time of eternal awakening,

A birthing of all creation, first wind, and then breeze:

The loosening of a single acorn, so to speak, and then

The sudden fall, then tumbling, then tenuous rest.

It has purpose but as well is food,

And needs a place to wait, a place of darkness and light.

There is a profound hiding in creation that unfolds both

Mystery and purpose, so hides the little acorn.

Everything about the child is light and smell and sound.

It is a frightful emptying of creation, so there must be

The softness of the mother's breast, and the timeless

Music of her heart sounds.

TRINITY SEVEN

He has heard of the Romans but never

Seen them in his small village.

He has heard of Sepphoris but never

Realized it was so close.

He has ridden on his father's shoulders

But not so far that he was chafed.

He has seen the dead but never more

Than one – never so many, never hanging

From trees, like careless stitching on red cloth.

Warned, the men stumble back to their homes.

The boy turns to look once more. He can

Hear the wind scream above while the breeze

Seems unusually silent. Somber.

The men in the village gather to talk.

Among the boys there are sticks and stones

And parody – and every single Roman soldier falls.

The father listens.

The birds in the small tree and the fierce little boys

Are in charge of the village.

He bows his head, shuts his eyes,

And says nothing; the breeze moves in so to whisper.

He calls his son to the tree

Grabs the stick out of his hand. He demands that his son

Slap the trunk with his hand, and slap it hard.

And when the boy does so, there is instant and utter silence -

The busy chatter stops; the silence begins to reshape the tree, 

And the father bends down to take up the stick

And then breaks it over his knee.

TRINITY EIGHT

The mother caresses the child,

As does the child's father,

And he can only watch –

From him all creation flows and

Yet he can make nothing embrace him.

Wrong, for the breeze is always against him.

They are two then one,

Waiting for the child to move.

He

Entered into the womb thinking nothing

Was ever to be a surprise and pressed into

Its warmth, concealing. He felt deeply for the young

Woman. She will come to know the pain

Of separation but unlike him she will recall

The child's smell, the smoothness of his skin,

And even his sounds.

He

Has watched them for several hours

And it has ceased to seem eternity. It is a very

Human thing to watch a newborn, periled

By every breath – or know the profound relief

That comes when the child at last takes the next breath. 

He

Watches the young mother and the child's father;

As they breathe the child. Now he knows why he can never

Simply turn inward, away, and sets the breeze to embrace

This small family.

TRINITY NINE

Does love come first, or knowing?

A flame must glow before the burning,

And yet the glow seems benign:

Insects pay little attention to glow, though

Surely it precedes the mad

Just so, 

Certainly love can come first – the mother

Loves her child even as it moves in the womb,

Though she knows nothing yet, even of pain –

And

It is a curious thing how knowing

The infant demands the mother, perhaps

For the first time in her life, to forget all else, 

And

It is when a fleshy knowing begins that

The mother screams, “Please, God. God!

Let the baby be safe”, and her scream awakens

Eternity.  

The breeze seems benign but the wind cannot.

It is impossible to touch the infant and

Not the girl, so the wind turns away.

Unable to stop what is in motion, it muffles a

Scream as well. 

TRINITY TEN

Laying in his father's arms

He looked up through the branches of the tree

Watching the breeze touch each leaf -

And beyond. Like

There is no stone in the small creek

That is out of place, no twist in a tree's trunk that

Lacks purpose, no bird that does not endlessly rehearse

Its song, He nestles deep into his father's embrace

Wondering what he would say.

His father smells of a day's work, and his chest

Heaves prayerfully. He begins to breathe

As his father does, and soon feels that they are one.

There is no shame in holding this man,

Letting him touch my cheek and smooth my hair.

This man's reach is so great that it seems

He can touch the sky. There is no emptiness

As all creation unfolds - and circles them.

And it has to circle for his father had said,

“Creation is as much behind you as forward.

It is often what others will not notice that makes

All things perfect."

 

Jack Justice from Newport, Kentucky, 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. His Trinity Poems 2-5 are available in the prior issue (August 2004) of Australian E-Journal of Theology.