The Antidote

The vegi-strainer has its place
When evening meals are made;
But when we use it for our cash
The road to loss is laid.

Some folks poke holes in strainers then
These large holes stay that way;
When short of cash the small holes patch
“I’m hero”, then they say.

But water pours out from their sieve
As if there were no end;
A simple piece of cello-wrap
Would show how best to mend.

You see, some folks are built like that,
Big ‘holes-in-pockets’ are;
The trick is not to stop the holes –
Trade services with jar.

But that is more than strainer types
Can do – jars grate on them;
So they just turn the tap on full –
Continuing to spend.

That works just fine till they get old
And see their hair turn grey;
Then taps don’t work the way they should
No matter what they say.

No money saved, no assets mind
They by a river liver live,
And think the flow will always go
Which flows right through their sieve.

What starts as trickle as a kid
Turns to a gush, then flood;
It looks, when young, this rising curve
Won’t curve back to the mud.

But it’s a bell-curve not a slope
Which tracks our income flow;
It curves back down as we grow old,
Then from this earth we go.

It’s not just us – ’cause we get sick
And fatigue plagues our bones –
But others – young ones in the pack –
Nudge us to Davy Jones.

So best to factor in that curve
While it’s a rising sight,
’Cause once it turns back towards the dust
You’ll have no power nor might.

So what you need’s a certain type
Whose error’s the reverse
The type who pulls the drawstrings tight
On pocket-book and purse.

Of course, that person feels the way
You do, and that’s the catch –
Allergic to each other are
But that’s the perfect match.

The antidote to allergy
You both so deeply feel
Is finding that God’s way of love
Is not a myth – it’s real.

He is the one who said to us
Those days so long ago –
Your lives are gong to shrivel up
Until you change the flow.

The power and resource of this world
Are there for you to use
But if you meld them with my gifts
There’s more than you can use.

But if you don’t, (for which you’re free
To do so all your life)
The flow must inward come for you
To make your way with wife.

That’s why they say ‘get all you can;
Can all you get or see;
Then wreck the rest so others can’t
Get even more than thee’.

But ‘I love you’, God said to us,
‘I made this place for you;
Provision made for all your needs
You need not live like zoo.

‘To live my way, ’tis outward flow
From me, through you, and then,
On outward to the other folks
This life to all extend.

It looks like that’s not true, of course,
From your oasis lone;
But bullets, guns, and bigger ships
Made yours a cushy home.

Four hundred years of British rule
Is nothing from afar.
Your view is that of upward curve –
The culture’s sieve and jar.

So macro-life’s like micro-life –
We’re people, after all;
It’s been like that since Adam took
Eve’s apple at the fall.

For then it was (however ’twas)
We chose our way to live –
Our micro-macro policies
Both for the jar and sieve.

It’s not that jar is better than
A sieve as way of life –
For both, they need a change of flow
To shift from death to life.

But that is long-term, usually
We live in stable times.
Our lives extend beyond the crash –
That’s for your kids and mine.

The short-term problem is the one
That wrecks things up for most –
That allergy God gave to us
To slow us down to coast.

The sieve and jar allergic are
To each, and all the folks;
Which slows the way we wreck things up
Like oceans, air – our hosts.

The Scripture author saw the joke
God gave to us the day
Our Babel-project rose from sand
In such efficient ways.

That bit of allergy He gave
To wreck efficiency
Was given to us to buy us time
To smarten up, you see.

We think we’re smart when we find ways
To live our lives alone;
So jars and strainers lump along
And screw up jobs and home.

We’re built as parts of larger scene
Like hands and eyes and feet.
Together, we get on in life
As body – oh how sweet.

A body gets to make its way
Each part gets meat and drink;
Not so a box of body parts
Which cannot even think.

So, just as we’re slowed down a bit
From wrecking air and sea,
We’re also stopped from working well
As sieve and jar – you see?

Solution’s just the same – change flow –
So in to outward goes;
Let God provide the sustenance
With power, and way to know.

Of course, that is the issue for
That’s one thing we’ll not do;
For God as center-source of life
Is what we most eschew.

‘OK, that’s fine’, God said to us
‘You’re free to live that way;
Life will not change to lesser ways
No matter what you say’.

So here we sit at edge of life
Which we have savored well;
The macro-context – what a mess –
And micro-cancer’s hell.

It says that Adam died the day
Both Eve and Adam ate;
But folks say, ‘No, that can’t be so –
Man’s ’round, for heaven’s sake!’

But Adam died, and Eve, of course,
When we took deadly route;
It takes a while to curve to earth
As we this life pollute.

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