Saint Bartholomew Remembers Jesus Christ as an Athlete

Saint Bartholomew Remembers Jesus Christ as an Athlete

Saint Bartholomew Remembers Jesus Christ as an Athlete

            Always in training. Yet helping with his work
was partly boring, sometimes even nasty.
Still, even when I felt he’d gone too far,
think Here we go again out came the logic
smooth as a circle, Roman disciplined.
Brilliant. Yes. Yet never near to God.
            Only when he ran.
Only when I saw him striding.
(He’d leap and throw his arms above his head.)
It really was a case of Run with me.
I did. And often we came down the mountains
(jogging loosely, never with a cramp)
my running partner, heading for Jerusalem,
appeared as if his feet were next to God.
           This too was a feat: running for a month
(as rumour had it).
                               Sprinting in the temple
was nothing less than perfect. Tables knocked,
whips raised and money lost.
He charged them twice.
            Of course revenge was needed, and his arms
were raised once more; his feet, however, broken;
sort of enforced retirement. Still,
he made a comeback to end all comebacks.
                                                                          Once
there were ten, and I half-walking, pacing
(my room-mates, seated, limbered-up in thought).
We stopped the noise and movement; standing still,
I heard the footsteps pounding up the stairs.