Update and a poem

I’m home. My flight home had been changed and I was going to be coming in on the late flight, so I was glad to take a bump in Atlanta and allow the airline to put me up and give me enough money for another trip… So I got home yesterday morning, flying back in to a landscape dusted with snow. What a change! Driving home from the airport, I listened to Stephen Cobert on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Sunday, on Comedy Central, Cobert will present his “Christmas Special.” It sounds like a lot of fun. One of the songs played on Fresh Air was a parody of the commercialization of Christmas, sung by Cobert and Elvis Costello. I think I know what I’ll be doing Sunday evening.

Monday night, my last night in North Carolina, I spent some time thinking on the Kure Beach pier. When the moon rose a little at 9 PM, it was blood red and inspired this poem. I don't understand everything about blogger formating an why the second part is spaced differently than the rest!


Observing the Apocalypse from Kure Beach Pier

Gazing upon the firmaments from the end of the pier
I’m serenaded by waves lapping against the wooden pylons
and the sound of the wind whipping against my jacket
chilling the back of my neck and erasing my cares.
I see Orion, rise on his side, out of the sea,
as if pulled by his belt, one star at a time appearing
till the three stand on top of each other on the eastern horizon.
The Hunter’s club is raised, in his winter pursuit of the bull

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea…-Revelation 13:1

A woman behind me yells in Spanish
and her husband drops his rod and rushes to her side
to aid in her battle against the fish.
Her rod bent double.
he leans over the railing,
and hand over hand pulls in her line,
and the angry ray dancing on the end.
On the deck of the pier,
the fish, the son of the Leviathan,
lashes out at the gathering spectators,
whipping it’s tail around and exposing its lethal barbs

On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish the Laviathan…
-Isaiah 27:1

I look back upon the firmaments and observe
to the north of Orion
a fiery red moon rises above the waters,
the waning gibbous lunar body
looks as if its a caldron of molten iron
slightly tipped, ready to pour it’s deadly contents upon the ocean,
In horror, I watch,
but too fascinating to run.
And even if I could, where would I go?

The sun shall be blackened and the moon to blood
Before that great and terrible day of the Lord.
-Joel 2:31

Mesmerized, I watch in awe
and a feeling of relief yet sadness,
as the moon rises higher,
its hue changing from red to yellow
and finally white. Once again, we’ve been spared the apocalypse.