Portents in the skies

Haiku for the watchful

Let the walls crumble!

The temple no longer serves;

welcome the new thing!

Portents in the skies.

How we love to speculate,

what does it all mean?

Don’t be led astray.

Test their claims; do they measure

up to love’s standard?

Coming in the clouds!

Expectations have worn thin

in two millennia.

Is it really near?

Is the Son of Man coming

to end history?

These understandings

from two thousand years ago;

are we bound by them?

Everything passes.

His words remain to give life,

calling us to love.

Be watchful with love.

Be eager in your serving.

This is faithfulness.

Midnight or cockcrow

or at dawn, it matters not

if love is your guide.

© Ken Rookes 2020

Some haiku for teh Narrative lectionary, Lent 5

The sun will be darkned

In ancient writings

the sun, moon and stars

combine to herald the coming

of the new age.

The laws of physics are cast aside

as the sun draws its blinds,

the moon withholds its light from the earth,

and the stars are swept into glowing heaps,

having fallen from the sky.

Outrageous metaphors,

emblazoned in the heavens

to signal cosmic events

and to fanfare the advent of the Son of Man;

whatever that means.

Something to do with Jesus,

and what he came to do,

and be. Something to do with

defiant love, reckless compassion,

and a quixotic commitment to justice, peace

and hope.

It could happen.

© Ken Rookes 2014

Painting 1977

The man in the Peter Booth landscape

stares out with red eyes

while the city burns behind him.

Fearful and anxious blacks and greys

give birth bloodily to the distress and pain

of orange flame and scarlet moon.

(Or is it the sun?)

The standing white dog observes without judgement;

nothing that these mortals do can surprise him.

Booth’s apocalyptic vision

could have been referencing this Lucan passage,

speaking as it does, of celestial signs

in the firmament above,

and distress upon earth.

The literalists get excited,

talk fervently of the day that is coming,

of end-times, judgement

and of the hope of heaven’s compensation

for earthly hardship and indignity.

Vindication for the righteous.

They look to the skies, eager to be the first

to see their Master surfing the clouds,

hoping for a mid-flight rendezvous.

Look, Jesus, here we are;

we’ve kept ourselves nice!

It is not in the skies

that the work of faith is to be done,

but here, among earth’s dust,

where the faithful wait

with yearning and with tears,

and with defiant love; costly, unresting.

They press on, determinedly declaring 

in the midst of indifference, uncertainty and distress:

The kingdom of God has come near!

© Ken Rookes 2012

Link to Peter Booth's Painting 1977

There was a man sent from God

Can’t allow too much expectation
or ferment among the people!
Things may get out of hand,
as any number of Arab nation leaders,
living, dead or vanquished, might testify
in this tumultuous year.
Best to keep the lid on it.


It was no different in Palestine
a couple of millennia earlier.
A wild and half-crazy man
set up camp by a watercourse
and began to affect the prophet
with his excited and revolutionary utterances;
“Repent!” he shouted.
Quickened by the traces of hope
they heard in his voice,
crowds flocked to listen.
Perhaps the shadows in their souls,
might become faded, at least a little,
in the words, the water and the sun.


And so, according to the fourth gospel-writer,
priests and Levites are sent from the city
to interrogate the Baptiser.
“Who,” they demand, “do you think you are?”
After replying with an unsatisfying trio of
“I am not-s,” he is pressed
to identify himself as a voice,
a harbinger of turbulent times.
He speaks of another;
through whom the true revolution
will find its inception;
one who, like it or not,
is surely coming.



© 2011 Ken Rookes

Therefore, keep awake

The sun it will be darkened

the moon won’t give its light,

the stars will fall from heaven,

the days will be as night.

The Son of Man’s descending,

they say he’s coming near.

These verses, strange to comprehend;

perhaps by now he’s here.

The pictures show him in the clouds

a-coming through the skies;

while he looks upon the faces

he sees through the disguise.

They say he’ll soon be present,

they say to read the signs,

the fig tree and the heavens;

we still can’t tell the times.

His words are here for telling;

the truth, it won’t be sold.

There are no buyers out there;

love’s latte has grown cold.

The planet waits its lovers;

the reserve has not been reached.

The walls have been erected large;

one day they will be breached

You say that you’ve been waiting,

your lamp is filled with oil;

the ocean’s growing warmer

while your hands are free of soil.

And the arrows keep on flying,

and the boats still run aground;

and no-one seems to listen,

while lies and wrongs abound.

And still the faithful servants wait;

truth and justice guide them.

They’ll not be silenced, not be still;

while love and anger drive them.

Faith isn’t in the coming,

or in judgement’s promise – threat;

in the doing, loving, waiting:

proof that faith's not finished yet.

© Ken Rookes 2011
consider this a work in progress. I thought I'd put it out there and see where it took me - Ken