Fast Day 252 April 1 2012 {Being There}

Being There

I woke up this morning and found
the twentieth century laying
on my front porch like a newspaper
that had been out in the rain all night,
its screaming headlines now weeping
tar-like sins and ink everywhere;
the twenty-first century flashed
and died, an electric light bulb
failing as I trashed the newspaper.

I woke up before first light;
in the coal-oil lamp hours that
are angular and severe,
like an unfurnished house,
full of promise, austere yet rich,
like an empty Shaker meeting hall;
I walked out in the rain:
let God’s leather
take God’s weather…

Shaker Hall

--
notes

I almost entirely forgot to post this.
I called it "Being There" because I was there...  Zen-thing...

There is an antithesis between the first and second stanzas expressed by the first sentence in each.