Do You Want to Be Made Well? A Poem on John 5:1-12

It’s a holiday, his ears filled with the sound

Of faraway jubilation, folks laughing and eating and

Being together. But he’s alone. Not really, but it feels that way

Everyone alone together, some deaf and some dumb and

Some lame and some blind and everybody half dead. It’s the

Fellowship of freaks, and he’s not sure what his ailment is--

Just sick, sick all over. Sick longer than he can remember.

He’s watched baptisms in the frothy waters but

There’s nobody to take him. So when a voice speaks

He’s never heard before, or perhaps once when time began

He startles. It’s a question, a sharp one—do you want to be made

Well?

But he can’t imagine life right side up. He shows off all he knows:

The practiced art of gloom, the well aged excuse. But the voice cries

Get up! Cuts him seamlessly, from yesterday/today, lifts him

Soaring! from the mat soaked with vomit, hurls him from the pillow dark.

Pick up your mat and walk, and he groans with vertigo

Suspended between no and yes, feet planted firmly on the fork,

Party doors swinging open and he rises to the occasion

Walks steadily to the gleaming

Now.