To Walk on Water

Vincent R. Pozon

Faith is an act of lying supine,
and motionless, torso yielded,
bare skin cold in a blue and white room
of soft voices tittering about
bare skin recoiling from the idea
of a surgeon with a scalpel in hand.

When a man is carried away against his will,
hands flail and grab whatever are about,
my fingers reach for and wrap around
the door jambs of unsurrendered problems.

I am Isaac, elbows bound, bewildered
by the sight of a dagger overhead,
I am Peter, my toe touches the water
and the water gives way, the cold
of a laughing sea teasing forefoot
as I pierce the surface gingerly
searching for a floor to tread on.
I am Moses and worse, if the rock
is not a geyser in a nervous second,
I will strike it ten times and more.

Though this faith is feeble, like a weed
that peeps from a crack in the concrete,
weed it still is, frail but not fragile,
I will tend to it, and nourish it
until it is a prickly carpet,
until I can heave larger sighs,
until I can see, with eyes closed tight,
the hand staying the hand of Abraham,
until I can ignore the hubbub
of wars and virus news, condone
the bright light of television,
sleep even, like at the barber’s,
sleep even with a razor beneath my chin
scraping the days of worrying away,
until I learn to walk on water.