Images surround us ...

[alice wellintown]

This strikes, leaps off the page a poem, it rings all the bells in all
the un real city

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we
wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and
failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and
animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best
intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely
chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes
simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist
received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his
mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before):
once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford
in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting
passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure.
And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility
past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and
the body left on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame
me? Hopelessly ascendant in resurrection, the image is pegged on the
wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of
faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the
burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold,
triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and
wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the
truth still walks barefoot.