The Faith Issue
after Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
I launch my faith into water
with its frail raft of pregnant words,
the way a castaway might stow
a letter scratched onto dried bark,
laboured over, rolled carefully
into the one precious bottle,
sealed in its womb with husk & leaf,
catapulted from the high cliff
at dawn, when the tide will slowly
deliver my vessel from shore,
only to have it bob in waves
aimlessly till landfall, finding
berth with a child in plastic shoes,
who toes at the bottle before
pressing it to his navel; who
throws back my ill born faith.
© Matthew Joseph Johnson, 2009
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