Paul du Plessis

Establishment challenger
Confronter extraordinaire
In a call for justice
That backfired on me.
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Clip, clop,
With clods of earth rising
Behind the plough
Kicking over the traces
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Ziggurat star-gazers descend
Stepping down tiered balconies
Leaving Babylon’s babble
Scattered in a thousand tongues
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A divine presence settles on us
Above worm and bird, wombat and beetle
In the world of transmutation
Closely observed by explorer Darwin,
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Rumours rumble and elders mumble
But generations to come will say we’re blessed
As headlines preach gloom and newscasts doom
My spirit rejoices in God.
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Sub-particular matters collide
Bombarding each other
Through subterranean tunnels
To unearth the ultimate everything
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Recall the memory, the moment of revelation
When divine intervention came to life
Reborn in transformation.
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Feet set steady on a rock
Wading against the jet stream
Yet relaxed in swirling currents
Tumbling centrifugally against gravity
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With an understanding ear
Attuned to listening
To hopes and fears
Unrealized, but real
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Wheat harvested and threshed;
Ears milled and sifted;
Dough kneaded with fists
That might overcome an enemy
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Statuesque in plainsong chant
The organ pedals with toes tapping
Transporting the spirit heavenwards
In rising descants
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Involved in creation
Yet part of what he made;
Before the beginning
He keeps to our time;
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One candle extinguished
While another flickers
Over the emptiness of a chair
Vacated in the loneliness
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Translate its meaning for all people
In universal understanding
Of mysteries barely grasped.
Grappling for words
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Retreat to Lindisfarne
In search of the Holy Isle
In sabbatical seclusion
Close to the beginnings
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Struggling to find a voice
to explain the mystery of faith
in elusive eloquence;
hand-writing illegible,
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He’s the traveller with a difference
Who stops when others move
Past the one waylaid and robbed;
Going beyond first aid
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Ears pricked up
To receive the prophecy.
More than his Word – His words
Dangled between a pair of ear-rings
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Unknown that night
Yet known from birth;
Following as second
Wanting to be first;
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The carpenter’s son
Though not his son
Leaves home and the sawdust
For a journey of discovery
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