3

The man who understood change
read Kafka and got the joke,
heard the laughter of Jesus rising
loud and white as the sun,
felt the sudden chuckle of his fetal child
in his wife's tight ripe womb
and saw the dawn of God
burst a blessing on a parched
and soured world.

He wanted

uncontrollably to shout
but his voice was small,
one mother's child and she no virgin.
He wanted the power to turn heads
like a stripper or a woman
with a snappy stand-up line
but he lacked wisdom.
He lacked wisdom
but he had joy and boy
o boy was it a bubbly
fruit round o in his
singing o my lord
I love what grass and flesh
have made, sang the man
who knew that he
like everything must change.