Rising
from a long familiar bed
In slow motion final gestures suspend
A face in the tarnished mirror looks back
Transmutations simultaneously appear,
multilayered astral shadows domino behind his fear
Feeling
the slippery weight and strangeness of the soap in his hands
He trembles at this last simple ablution
His body will not beckon him again.
Old rituals conclude one by one as the dance of life winds down.
Panic and joy tug across his mind
It is the morning of his "wedding with God."
The "bride" paces like a cat within this cell
5,6,7 steps mapped daily from wall to wall
The compressed containment of a life in jail.
He
knows the intimacies of his body and the expanse of his soul
Closed in this adult cage for 17 years
the clamoring voices inside his head are quiet now
A case long forgotten by a culture dressed in judgment and fear
lost in an unquestioned sleep of reason and retribution
His sentence etched in steel and stone hovers without compassion
Rationalizing social irresponsibility and the illusion of justice.
The
clocks will stop soon
Fleeting
glimpses of a world outside, nature intrudes on memory
remote moonlight on hills through a sliver of window
the occasional moth or fly, mosquito or mouse
an errant cockroach or spider - accidental friends
breaking through razorwire and bars where he could not.
The soft rush of flowing air in the evening through some distant door
renews hope.
To support his family's desperate plea for insanity
clemency is urgently conveyed by a former President and the Pope.
Slowly,
day by day
Emerging from the depths of grief and chaos
Larry built a cathedral in his soul
with blocks forged from prayer and penitence
and sacred words of redemption.
A perfect Godman came into this dark abyss
To suffuse a suffering Hell with the breath of truth and release
Leaving His footprints of light behind.
Now Larry carefully matches his steps to each patterned glow.
Silently,
in macabre formation
his worldly keepers shroud their eyes from the fluorescent
wash
to escort #748 through blind corridors echoing vengeance,
Oblivious to the joyous liberation that awaits the fettered "bride"
deep within those brilliant eyes inside.
In
Huntsville a true disciple cheerfully prostrates his shackled body on
the prison block
To Greet the debt we all must pay eventually
The lethal dose precipitates as nectar in his veins
The elixir of inevitability.
God's
will is perfect and beyond our ken
"Only he who is capable of seeing Him sees Him
and keeps on seeing Him" they say.
The
nuptials are complete at 6:16 p.m.
From
the labyrinthine prison of this world
Joyous wings of sacred light lift Larry home
across an eternal hush of bliss beyond the cycling void
to the lap of his Eternity.
A
final wish fulfilled.
His ashes we now mix into the saintly soil
Of that spiritual retreat he once could only see
in momentary reverie.
