Reading aloud together

Larry Moffitt
April 19, 2011

In the beginning. In the pre-dawn dark
we whisper hello and start down the road
me and my ten thousand score silent friends
tip-toeing behind, above, around my ears
white robes and moccasins they try to blend
into the background of my experience and years

The Word, The Word takes root in the soiled soul
virile, surging, making its own weather
becomes everything to me and my people
the town square of centuries, the Jesusbolt
that fastens the sky and earth together.

The message harvested by they who came,
True Man with she who walks inside his love
who took the lash and shouldered history's blame,
cracked the code of time and in horror viewed
the wreckage of a father reaching out
and cried my God, what have they done to you?

Each letter, no, each wine-dark drop of ink
squeezed from tears of broken love and forged
into a chain with blood in every link
becomes the only thing we have to hold
when all other hopes turn to rot and dust
and death lays down its fingers in the cold.

They found truth that helper angels convey
to all those dirt farmers and samurai
and children who perished along the way,
who have strolled where heaven's rivers swirled.
They join us to release these sacred words
that by reading aloud, we feed the world.