Dry Orphans of Jerusalem

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------------/Orphans of Jerusalem: The Thoughts of The Man Healed by The Pool of Bethesda

What is hope?  Is it
some iridescent notion from above, an abstraction
of reality
with expansive wings, strap of the scabbard slung
across his right shoulder, white robe dipped
in streaks of glowing sparkles that spill from heaven’s
shooting stars? Is his sword powerful enough
to dispel the serpent’s venom that poisons
our dreams, fanged despair verging on suicide,
these scaled sentiments that slither around us
(at all times), into our subconscious whispering
improbability and “leprosarium”:
diseased shoulders resting against
diseased shoulders, lame legs atop of lame legs,
blind heads trying to nestle themselves,
constantly adjusting their weary way
into other blind men’s laps, arthritic backs relieved
by pillars doubling as guideposts of the cursed, the bright
glimmer of the moon refracted off the waters,
while a mass of clumped bodies  
sing ourselves to sleep with crossed fingers,
choirs of the desperate using hymnals of the forsaken?
Or is it a stirring from within? A rippling of tiny waves
of faith in the Bethesda of your own heart,
that has prayed and waits for more
than just the sporadic dip of angels
sprinkling the privileged around you for 38  long years,
while never getting wet, patiently yearning
for a billow of joy to gush forth due to someone else
stepping into the pool of your most sacred vulnerability. 
Yes, I tell you, it is a man born in Galilee,
seeking to save the lost like me even on the Sabbath.
His words are like miraculous Living Water
spritzing from His Mouth,
drenching a dried, broken soul in redemption.


------------------------John 5:1-9
After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.