Reality Check

   REALITY CHECK

What was it Pilate said to Jesus?
"What is Real?" No, no not that.
"What is Truth?" more like it, as I recall.
But not nearly so interesting a question.

Truth, it seems to me, having learned it recently,
sounds forth like a gong in a gigantic marble room:
echoing and re-echoing with (what shall we say?)
integrity, constancy, eternity even,
that puts 'honesty' to share as the self-serving
little slave of convention that it is, truly.

Truth is self-defining: it gives life and hope and
possibility mother-wet wings most would deny.
Pilate should have had eyes to see and ears to hear.
Truth stood before him, stripped and raw.
Truth whispered in his ear and he heard not.

"What is REAL?" Now there's a query worth some salt.
There's a wrestling match worth of an Angel foe.
There's something to wake up just before dawn and parry with--
sword against sword, making sparks, drawing blood.
There's a nightmare full of incomprehensible images
requiring pause during a sudden afternoon rainstorm
with lightening, thunder and a touch of hail.

When someone drags "reality' into the field of play,
play stops.

'Being realistic,' someone told me recently--with
words that echoed like Truth off marble wall--'kills the Spirit.'

Poor dead Spirit, slain by Reality's arrows!

(Here's the secret Truth that Reality can never quench:
Ice water poured over you in sufficient amounts produces gratitude.
Gratitude is an alias of Truth. Truth is the twin of Love.
And there is this--the Spirit never dies....)

Finally, there's simply nowhere in the cosmos to cash a Reality Check.
There's no currency available. The banks are closed for the holiday.

jgb