7/26/2002

Dark, inky urban night

City that never sleeps, don’t let them fool you

Sleight of hand, we sleep with one eye open,

My father does that,

He’s a retired fireman, engine company 243

31 years, every fire could be one’s last,

Kind of like what Jesus told us,

We know not the time so be on watch,

Like a spool of thread

Life unwinds, spiraling out and in

Breathing, heard within the wind, a voice?

Maybe the prophet had something there,

The Lord loves to surprise,

Popping up in the strangest places,

Nativities, Damascus Road, Upper Room,

Bread, wine, stone tablets, burning bushes, as a carpenter, from the hard wood of the

manager to the hard wood of Calvary,

Even in poetry, perhaps, from a city named after the fruit that Adam and Eve spied in the

garden?

Big Apple, little poem,

Crucibles of possible presence?

As the Lord deigns

-Frank Attanasia