Inside Unity: A Poem by Dave Jaffe.

  Inside Unity: A Poem by Dave Jaffe.




    There's no kneeling
    Only healing
    Inside this church.




   No talk here of the Gospels
  Or Moses or much of Christ.
  If there is a God
  Who has trod
  On this earth
  This Creator's light
  Splashes down on our faces
   From a blue sky
  That hovers way above the church's roof.




  The words of the minister
  Aren't sinister.
  They stroke my scarred face
  Stitch up the epidermal surface
  Where a week ago
  A surgeon's knives
  Scraped cancer away
  From the dark floor of my mind.


  This minister talks of healing
  Not sealing
  Away stark memories of the past
  In locked vaults of times gone by.
  His words gently touch my skin.
  "Life if good," he says.
  To me this means
  There is no sin.



   Outside
  The city clears its throat
   From the mouths of a million cars.


  I'm sorry.
 I can't worry anymore about poisons
 That scud around in the earth, the air and the water
 Or the starving billions
Or those led  to slaughter
 In Syria or elsewhere.
 For now I am healed.
 No need to steal
 Fragile moments of happiness
 From the present of my life,
 Or look in fright
  Toward its end.


 "In unity," someone said,
  "there is strength."
  In this Unity Church I have found happiness.
  Just enough to return for another day.