Three Churches

Now

 Middle

Beginning

The news, no longer fetched from porches,

sparkles all the world on  internetted monitors.

Iraq, Iran, Islam, Insurgents, Ideologues, Us.

Roman Catholic church is headlined,. A long, black

line of priest-abusers and bishop-enablers, pursued by

survivors, their mothers. People-Groups clamor their roiling

rancour again, again, in this the third millennium, for change.

Screen signals News Alert, cuts to a bishop, terrified

by swelling tsunami cresting down remorselessly on

Peter’s barque, averts digital eye contact, begs

believers forgive scandal’s horror, ignore lethargy of

 response, heed a magisterium of two thousand

years. A bent man squints, hollers, “Accountability!”

Eye contact is made. The bishop’s shift away.

Squinter clicks for scenes of pomposity past and present,

those ancient men, gowned in scarlet, purple, red, with

one in white, girdled by great wide belts of  day-glow

hues, hatted under tapered cones with golden tassels.

Like ghosts from the Middle Ages, slipper-shuffling,

crooked staffs for canes, they drool out

official teachings in a Latin as dead as their hearts.

The bent one palms the mouse, then clicks on Gospels.

Sashes, robes, hats, pomp disappear, fade into a

simple scene on a lakefront shore in Galilee where

Twelve tanned men, gnarled as fishermen always are, sit,

eyes fixed on a radiant one in  seamless robe, his arms round

children. He is teaching his prayer, Our Father. A bent fisherman

fiddles with a great millstone, scored, lying on the sand.

[August 1, 2012]