I met the leper



I met the leper

(Ngatiawa retreat 2014)

He sat astride his majestic
life, head filled with dreams and
hopes,  draped in chivalry and war.
Certainty drew him on his direction.
The other stood to one side of
this uncommon route, confident in festering
sores, head filled with shards of dreams
and hopes drowning in decay.
A moment only, the horse
stumbles. Astonished, he
sees, and reaches out to find
his own rotting face, corroded
heart and ruined soul. A
gasp, not of a foul
stench but a sweet scent
of life rediscovered. In his tentative
caress of the other his darkness is
held in love. He is
undone. He is the leper.
I am undone,
and left stripped naked before my father.

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