i. Genesis

Could this finally be our
jubilee year? Another
          chance for the city of god
          inside the city of man
          to crack through hearts of concrete
          and extend a forgiving
          hand? Will we reach each other
          before it ends? Wounds able
          again to withstand, without
          indebtedness to our own
          mortal failings’ worst plans, love’s
          demands and whatever else
          heaven sends? Sacrifice and
strife such long-suffering friends—
ancient but not immortal,

                    ii. Exodus

this freedom from being down
a sudden epiphany
          singing loud, relegating,
          with thunderous kiss, to the
          apocryphal’s bottomless
          pile of authorless thoughts, what
          insidious feelings once
          made us so miserable—
          could we as zealots burn out
          with apostolic zeal wounds
          flames for so long would not let
          us misfits heal? Could keeping
          sacred those holiest of
accidents that tracked our limbs
with scratches and marks ancient

                    iii. Leviticus

trees envy, repeating their
records of our worn-out souls’
          spiritual warfare, bones
          warped from lost causes turned by
          some saint into victories
          none but us can comprehend
          and then so firsthand, can these
          scars increase in us courage
          and trust in the forces of
          the lord which formed both us and
          the world? This thirst, no longer
          ignored, is what cloudburst of
          mysteries revealed that soon
distinguishes magic from
prayer, words from seeing what no

                    iv. Numbers

page can prepare a reader
to experience, this storm’s
          yearning leading moments from
          dreams into tears, a stream whose
          course has been herding those sheep
          most in need of a poem’s
          immediate healing, no
          one more deserving than he
          who has been deserted, and
          from the furnace-pit of his
          burning wilderness, cries out
          to him, ‘lord, make me to see
          with the eyes of my heart what,
with my thoughts, I cannot!’ You
who have fallen, who have failed,

                    v. Deuteronomy

observe once-and-for-all my
star at its first-and-final
          rising, take home another
          road but do not go without
          holding in your palm the dew
          of a dawn whose moonlit calm
          climbs the horizon with love
          enough to quench the parched whose
          hearts shatter under the weight
          of silence, gratitude for
          a new and another day
          of life, once uttered, what cures
          a soul’s dark night of its fight’s
struggle, light what washes from
our shadows their loneliness.