Pentecost Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

In a vesture of flame, early Christians
walked within the narrow corridor of certainty.
Where they stretched out their hands lightning struck,
the sick rose, and meaning appeared in people's lives
as colours blossom after rainfall.
Not for them family holidays without enough money,
school-run traffic, projects with weekend deadlines,
the intractable sickness of a parent.

On the mountain, faith is not an issue -
the bracing wind of enthusiasmos blows all hair alike.
It's in the descent to the valley that the shadows steal over us,
dulling experience to shades of gray -
where those not with us at the summit question our encounter
as if we'd been to a concert they'd no way of hearing.

Whatever faith is, it is clinging to inner certainty
in the face of outer conflict. It is the energy
to keep applying the lever of conviction
to the stone of inert ‘reality' until at last
it rolls away from the resurrection cave -
whence emerge the hesitant, the doubtful,
the confused, grateful for the light.

From unignited lives a chain of empowerment
stretches like a burning fuse to those who,
struck by lightning, stand engulfed in flame -
challenging humans to silently walk uphill
toward the conflagration to become
heat conductors in a chilly world.

20/05/2009