A Poem in celebration of my Poet-Sensai, David Harrity.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor. Isaiah 61
My friend, a poet of Hebraic proportions
Found out he was a Jew, a new Jew
Today,
A serendipity of biblical magnitude
Now he knows why he’s wailed
At the wall of lament for so long
Smelling those tiny crumpled
Up prayers stuffed in the mortar like cigarette butts.
Now he understands why he hears
The howls of holocaust
On otherwise peaceful nights
Phantom coyotes of doom.
Now he gets it.
That’s why he’s read Scripture with such dissatisfaction
Like its in a language long since divorced from her tongue
Explains what happened
at the traveling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in the Rupp Arena sports complex
They caught him curled up in the corner
Cradling something like a baby
Only it was an original parchment
From the scroll of Isaiah
Speaking to him of the Messiah
He dreamed of
My friend, he touched the text, stroking the script
As though it were the hem of his robe
But you will never believe what happened next.
There he sat in the corner cradling
Isaiah in the manger of his arms.
It gets better.
The surveillance cameras, high def no less, Recorded it all.
My friend tore off a piece of the scroll, yes, the Dead Sea Scroll
And yes, to the surprise of the not-watching-at-the-time security guards
He ate it, the first seven verses of the 61st chapter,
Said it smelled like money and tasted like honey.
I watched in stunned awe
as he chewed that ancient sheep skin
preserved intact for a thousand years
surviving flood and famine, earthquakes,
genocides, eluding a thousand grave robbers
tucked away in a cave, a treasure hidden for posterity
Now that scroll, it’s somewhere in a sewer
Floating among feces in a flood of urine
Like a Messianic Messenger descending
From heaven to hell
Eaten, digested and crapped out by my friend,
Making its way to a non descript water treatment plant
Where it will be purified, filtered and rise up to that water tower in the sky
Where it will be on tap to refresh an entire city
And to think some catholic kid
On a school field trip finked him out.
Now my friend, the new Jew
Spends most of his time pondering the meaning
Of those words he ate that day
The sweet taste of Jubilee and
The unbelievable price I paid for him to have it.
I should tell you, this friend,
he’s my brother, my twin brother, my identical twin brother
which makes me a new Jew too, sort of, at least a true one
I see him every Tuesday now between 1 and 3
Visiting hours at the state penitentiary
I now call home.
john david walt, jr.
