Bubbling and Foaming River

from “Seizing the Poem in the Wonder of the Now” Roger R. Mahaney 2005, PublishAmerica, LLLP page 33-35

Visual images, the sound of music and the poem
A play of light on the objects on the forest floor
Spirits frozen in their dance in a mountain of ice
Rivers bubbling and foaming run through
As if there were a place to run to
And the water lazily roams,
Cascading over rocks and hills freely
Light dances on parked cars
And except for a few Sunday drivers, the streets are empty
And the Spring snow brings a beauty
That only a poet could love.

But a leprous cancer envelops the people,
They hate their jobs and their spouses
They hate each other and the church
A political scheme of lies and misfortune they call the Gospel
And the prophets to them are but fools in a daydream
Tsunamis anyone? Hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires?
Anyone remember September 11, 2001?
And they run trying to be so important
But they are just vapors that are here for a while,
then gone,
And they are blind to the disease that swallows them up
one by one,
And the snow melts in the lukewarm loathing
That exudes from their guts,
Desperate tempers boil over And frustration reaps in the temples
And Christ is not preached.

The evening’s stillness and silence
Is broken by the ticking of the clock
Which with each passing second
Brings us closer to dawn
With the dawn comes the fear,
Rampaging with troubles and pain
of a workplace with no job security,
nor health benefits for workers,
With declining profits from declining sales,
overstocked, depreciating inventory, theft,
embezzlement, and lazy, inept and apathetic servitude
And with the uncontrollable floating currency the dollar now is
Removing equity from citizen’s hands
And cashing in are foriegnors like the House of Saud
Which brings new terror to the eyes
of the faithless neon-cement jungle
And so it goes in the religion of money
And Christ is not preached.

Yes, and the evening’s stillness and silence
Is also broken by the raging of an occasional siren
And New York’s finest and bravest haul more victims
of the rotting corpses of criminals in putrid prisons
Where education is forgotten, Reform put off for another day
And criminals move in and out with ease and the whores bray
With the joy of their new found prey
And the Bible is bashed in schools and jails
And taken out of context in the church
And Christ is not preached.

If you close your eyes
You can remember a soft, gentle Sunday morning
When we rose up early in the day to pray
And the dew on the grass wet our shoes and socks
As we hurried off to church
And the sermons we heard were real
Straight from the heart and soul full of zeal,
And faith cascaded forth like those bubbling, foaming rivers
All over the country freely and hope was in our eyes
And the road was full of faith and freedom
And our hearts were filled with ecstasy,
The ecstasy of being alive and being a child of God
And full of love of nation, church and each other
You people return to the golden rule, Apollo’s creed of old
Return to love your neighbor and do unto others as you
Would have done to you
And return to the pathway to life by obeying God’s statutes
And let your lips sing praises as of old to the risen Savior,
Our teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ, Naugavishnu
His law is love, His gospel is peace
And He shall reign forever and ever…