Richard Straw: RETRACINGS

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(from Acts 13:13 to 14:28)

Ah, the salty air from Paphos to Perga; bold words then in Pisidia's Antioch and in Iconium, but driven away from each, almost molested; worshiped in Lystra as if Barnabas and I were Zeus and Hermes, but stoned by the same gullible crowds, dragged out of their city, and left for dead; revived by new friends somehow for a long walk the next day to Derbe, not far from Tarsus, my old Tarsus, over the Taurus Mountains; returning finally here where we'd started our inland journey, but first walking all the way back through the towns we'd preached in and been run out of, walking upright through them all, talking our way to little Perga and into Attalia, a spot to remember on this endless coast of the Mare Internum.

at sea at dawn
dust-caked tunics
daven on deck

by Richard Straw
Cary, North Carolina