A Leap into the Year Ahead

Floating above a flood
Of forty days and nights of rain 
Drenched by the stench of cows
Herded with others, two by two, 
Then escaping into the future
Under a reminding rainbow.
 
Forty years sweating in the desert
Until they step across the river
Into the promise of the land 
Flowing with milk and honey
For pinhead oats, cooked 
For pleasure and the best of health.
 
Hardly dry from baptism 
Then forty days in a wilderness
Starved by fasting with nothing;
Encountering evil,
But refined for overcoming 
What most can't resist.
 
Hardly dry from the birth canal
After forty weeks in utero
Bathed in liquor amnii
Nourished by a mother's placenta
But loved into becoming
What all want to be.
 
February sun shines
On forty years of a life lived
With ups and downs, here and there,
Perfecting what's desired 
As we leap ahead
Into many more yet to come.
 
29 February 2016          André at 40