A Poetic Response to "Romans"

Romans Pull Question: Free Verse Poem

Amid the paths you would choose,
Along a path that is no longer yours to decide,
You might run across the thorn
Or the flower, depending greatly
On the way you choose, depending
On the way chosen for you.

Should you run across the thorn,
Which is common to all though
Known in light only to few,
The blood drawn from the pinprick,
The infinite and life-robbing stab,
Might give you pause to ask,
Why this evil? Where is good?

You wouldn’t say this, but it
Is the life soul of all questions
You might choose to ask, but the
True intent of your inquiry has
Already been chosen for you.
In the infinite, life-robbing stare,
Where what should be sees in the
Glass a reflection of all that has been forgotten.

Between these two is an ocean
Of pain, the gulf of human suffering,
Taking not less than all that it may
Before leaving the body cold, though still alive,
Where the living are, and are not, but still are,
In the awful limbo of what you dared to ask.

Yet all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well.
As the question becomes nothing more
Than nothing. It is no longer you,
Nor your might that asks, for the
Question is a combination of mortality,
And forgotten reality.

But all shall be well, when the Griffin
And phoenix guide the remembering flock,
To the gate of all that matters,
And the earth smiles in a race now remembered,
Recalling itself the long years of fragile hope
And eager search.
Children knew of it, poets ran after it:
The hope of a race now realized.

And all shall be weighed on the scale
Which has forgotten iniquity, and the
Countermeasure is eternal glory, by which
Only the fools shall find justice.
For they are, and are not, but still are,
The called and chosen,
costing not less than death,
gaining not less than life.