The old rickety blue podium
with painted yellow spirals and planets
morphs into the cross we all bear
(through us the awaiting audience)
up to the stage we have collectively made
of the Chapel of St. Paul and St. John
two more unlikely elder companions
caught in the upside down all one thing
counter-cultural NEW WORLD ORDER
government enclave in financial phalanx
a child’s cry in train full of tired workers
who ever more poor continue to exist
in the movement to transform election
the earthy sign of Great God’s selection
sedimentary fossils used for detection
story fused in layers of growing stone
our once fragile connection with creation
until finally that old podium reaches center
where it’s battered form ripples on out
like the stain glass window behind it
           it rises before us
           waiting, waiting

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.