(x = space)

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Simon Says

(based in part on verses)

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Is that the pie-man

Or Simon Peter?

Anyone

Who’d rather simonize

A game

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We know what Simon Peter says

He wrote letters

We have two

He fished

One kind and then the other

It seems he went back and forth

Between despair

And inspiration

His is a good cause

For reconciliation

Saying the one thing

You are Christ

Then falling, failing

Into water

(he is rescued)

First refusing foot-washing

Then wanting it all over

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Yet somehow he is the rock

A name

A metaphor

For church

Jesus says so

Then there’s the episode

Chapter and verse for us

When it is night

And his rabbi, his leader,

And his friend is arrested

xxxxxtaken away

xxxxxto the authorities

xxxxxwho can determine

xxxxxtemporal and real

xxxxxcontinued life

xxxxxor death

And when he’s near

To everything

And asked about it

Says he doesn’t know

He doesn’t know the man

And upon the last

Of three of these

He curses

And the rooster crows

And he sees

Maybe in every way

The savior

Who was his teacher

And his friend

And it’s over

No paradox remains

The holes have been dug

Into conviction

Into faith

And practice

In some new ways perhaps

At least on the inside

Where it matters

Unless feeding others

That is an outside matter

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What faith,

The joy he had

Have gone into the void

Like mortality

Into the entrance of a tomb

He goes away

He’s out of everything

For a chapter

Or two chapters

His own story

Torn out by the tearing actions

Of denial

Help my unbelief

He could have remembered

The cry of the parent

For the healing of the child

He could have wept

For Jerusalem

And for his friend

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Peter, Peter

Denier

Pumpkin-eater

Follower and friend

He said so

Jesus said so

Then everything was gone

He was gone

With the other one

Sometimes we lose our way

With the other

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C L Couch

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Matthew 26:69-75

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(the letters that are 1 and 2 Peter)

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nursery rhymes that are the stuff of ages, now

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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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