He came, walking towards them.

Haiku for those who sink.

He sent them ahead

by boat, to the other side.

The crowd was dismissed

Seeking solitude,

he ascended the mountain

to pray and reflect.

Out upon the lake

his friends battled wind and waves,

a long way from home.

In this strange story

he came ghost-like at morning,

caused them much alarm.

The reports tell us

that he walked across the lake.

Fear not! It is I!

Stranger still, a man

steps from the boat to join him;

does all right; at first.

Beginning to sink,

he cries in fear: Lord, save me!

Jesus takes his hand.

Is this an image

of baptism, of drowning

and rising to life?

Like the little boat

we are battered by the waves,

far from land and hope.

The waves engulf us;

We are fearful and we doubt.

Jesus, take our hand!

© Ken Rookes 2017

Angel’s message

You can smell the fear, almost taste it

in the television pictures of riots,

and on talk-back wireless;

the end of civilization as we know it.

If only we could go back

to the cream-picket-fenced,

white Christian Australia

of those pre-coloured

box-camera photographs,

and dwell there, secure and unthreatened.

Interrupting rudely

in this season of Advent,

we hear the promise of new things

unheard of revolutionary promises,

the lifting up of the poor and humble.

Then come the amazing words

from the lips of God’s angel messenger

to a young teenaged girl

who is about to experience

the end of her predictable world

with an unplanned pregnancy;

accompanied by all the shame

and potential violence

of her fiercely legalistic religion.

They echo through the next three decades,

and the two millennia that follow,

calling the faithful to a life of defiance:

“You don’t have to be afraid!”

© Ken Rookes