He had been walking through the church a few evenings earlier when lightning filled the darkness, and he had seen large human figures in the tableau. An angel and a woman in a bedroom. Darkness replaced the brief scene and he sat in a pew waiting, but there was to be no more revelation.

Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient

You have your own poor
amidst your wealth,
no less distant
from short-arm jabs
and handouts from the deep pockets of their own stolen goods.

You have your own wordless
asleep in your library,
no less hungry
for a roadside snack
while thumbing a ride on the information super-highway.

You have your own 'orphans'
surrounding your family,
no less abandoned
than Saint Mary McKillop's waifs,
distantly disguised by the soft focus of history.

You have your own excommunicated,
the 'disappeared' in your community,
no less denied
for their difference
when we send in the clones.

You have your own bureaucrats
framing your love of God,
no less certain 
in their knowledge
than a hundred years ago.
 
At the end,
there is no more life left to tell
but your own,
saintly in its endless beginnings.
                        

For you and for me,
all things seem possible when we look across blue water
from the solid shore.
Peering towards the horizon,
we conspire towards a thousand buoyant courses.

Imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,
we do not weigh our stamina against the undertow
nor the wind strength against our craft;
we have enough gods
to warrant speculation.

But there are those who stand upon the solid shore
who are already at the end of this world 
(and the next)
and our imagined journeys
are their fated drownings.

For them,
as they squint anxiously across the water
imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,
sailing into the blue
seems a truly godless journey.

So they sit watching us,
like hermit crabs,
waiting for us to set out,
assuming we are unlikely to return,
and picturing life inside our empty shells.