NIGHT WALK
ubi caritas et amor Deus ibi est
Together
hand in hand
they walked under the stars,
along the Neckar banks,<>
fingers & minds intertwined
laughing at silly things
like local towns & villages
all ending in "ingen,"
partners in marriage & faith
& Wissenschaft,
talking & talking & talking,
sharing ideas & dreams,
inspiration one to the other,
shuttling scripture & thought into
the fabric of everyday,
discussing Frauenpriestertum
& Una Sancta & Milton & Metzger
& the wonder of quickening life in her
swelling belly, & Paradigmawechsel
& oekumenische Theologie,
& Fledermaus & Figaro & Firebird . . .
re-membering, weaving new future,
from the strands of the past
on the loom of the present
her-story, his-story,
their-story:
Safe in the palm of God's hand
Hand in hand
apart
they walk under the stars
at the edge of the abyss.
She who could once out-think & out-argue
a whole nest of magisterial misogynists
in several tongues,
now chatters aimlessly on and on,
a torrent of words, still clever but unanchored,
round & round, a record stuck
in an encapsulated past,
tradita torn from traditio,
a starving tree, no longer green at the tips,
calcified roots incapable of absorbing
the fresh waters of life, neither sprouting future,
nor yet blessed with oblivion
but tortured by the agonizing knowledge
of the unraveling of her mind,
the shutting down of synapses,
conduits, & links,
raging, flopping, wildly at times,
piscis drowning on land,
while her companion holds on to her hand
feeling her slip from his grasp,
hanging on to Nietzsche's cliff
or the Jain jungle traveler's well edge
with torn, bleeding, weakening fingers
in despairing faith that somehow
his love can save them both . . .
The shepherd boy bites off the serpent's head
and rips the monster out of his throat,
hurling peals of cosmic laughter
into the void
while the voracious python, jaws agape,
lies in wait
below . . .
Where is God now?
She, with the brilliance of
a dying ember's flash, suddenly invents
a sparkling pun, & they laugh
into the night,
for this eternal moment:
hand in hand
Together.
ihs, 1994-95
