From that time on.

From that time on

That day,

when he called us together

and gave us the talk,

changed everything;

our lives included.

No going back to the easy excitement

of those earlier times, halcyons,

when the message was new,

along with the company.

We move on.

The journey becomes more determined,

the actions more considered;

the serious stuff has begun.

It was never a light thing,

but now we talk openly

of the struggles,

the suffering,

the dying.

This chosen road passes

from light to darkness,

and back to light again.

It takes us into the shadowed places,

the dim corners of a world

that waits yearningly for a coming;

for those who might bear even a glimmer,

the smallest spark

of defiant hope.

From that time on

we began to be disciples.

© Ken Rookes 2014

Love's courage

They are heroes,
the men, the women,
and all the children, too;
who stand up to the bullies.
Like Jesus, who refused to be intimidated
by Herod’s threats;
or Rosa Parks, defying centuries
of white superiority;
or Malala, Pakistan’s daughter,
standing her ground to confront Taliban misogyny.

There is a choice set before each of us,
the poet said: love and fear.*

Bullies are cowards, we are told,
and will flee in the face of resolute opposition.
But with the support of institutional wealth,
power, soldiers and guns,
the bullies may be blind to the scrawled messages
on their crumbling walls, and don’t always go quietly.
The raw ferocity of fear can be a terrible thing,
the consequences; dreadful.

Our heroes,
and many more whose stories we may never hear,
knew what was right.
Driven by a vision of all that might be,
they found the courage to live towards it.
Setting their sights upon the hoped-for goal,
refusing the temptations to avert their gaze
towards something simpler and less demanding,
they tread determinedly towards their Jerusalem..

*Michael Leunig



© Ken Rookes 2013

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