Rootsie

     I

In truth
there is no need
to speak of forgiveness.
In truth
is the will to live new.

I keep shouting
‘New wine, New wine’!
to remind myself
of the time.
It is a foot-stomping demand,
a cry of pure joy.

Some believe they must wait.
that suffering is the human condition
until redemption comes.
But there is only one way out of the old
and it is the new.
Rebuke those ideas
and drink from the cup
in front of you.

         II
O the things which I have carried
believing they were mine:
drinking from the musty dregs
when coursing through me
all the time
is the new wine.

The miles my heart has trudged
sore and heavy-laden,
the sludge I have waded through
thinking it led to el Dorado

when there was never anywhere
to go.
The gold is everywhere I look.
Can I bear the joy?
That seems the only question left
and a ridiculous one
at that.