Ruthie at the Common Art Program
raises up the name of this Saint
who she says walked on water and
as this is densely theologically debated
the Air America report on a scientist
who came up with an explanation
of the parting of the Red Sea for Moses
and the great escape of the chosen people
now has posited that Jesus him self was
walking on thin ice when he strode across
the lake to calm waters of Galilean storm.

As this rises from the depths of forgotten
lost morning dream, this feat of geological
and physical speculation, special dispensation
of ice age into such mystifying Earth process,
seems much more miraculous than if we saw
the actual fingers of God support Christ’s feet.

Gravity after all is such a weak slight force
unable to pull us through even the particle forces
that hold us together on the very lowest floor
of the material world where thought has left us.

 

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.