Transfiguration (Matthew chapter 17)

Delightful young Bride
Wedding week
Holiday in mountains
And jungles
Costa Rica.
Babbling streams
Verdant jungles
Birds with
Colour upon colour.


And locals
Always smiling
As they cooked
Exotic roasts.
Mixed the sweetest
Brighest fruit salads.
And poured fruit drinks
With indecipherable names.


Max and Tracy were Christians.
A union made in Heaven
They believed.
He had his three years
Police College, Aylmer.
Signed up with Owen Sound.
OPP.
Covering Township routes.
Bay areas.
All sorts of concerns
Accidents, misbehaviours.
Emergencies.


It was a death
That got him.
Close buddy Rick was
with Cambridge.
Scuba recovery specialty.
He had drowned
Trapped in fast- moving
Spill-water under
A bridge.
Trying to save a drowning boy
Caught in the current.
Numerous detachments
Mourned as if one.
A fine, believing, outgoing Man
To admire.


Now, Costa Rica.
Felt like a heavenly transport.
Glories within reach


But then there would be
the coming down to the Valley.
Demon possessed ruffians
And thieves.
Drugs.
Break and Enter.
Numbers rackets.
Gang violence and payback.
Vietnamese,  Jamaican
Sudanese and First Nations.
A real bees’ nest.


The Valley of service
For this Copper.
Faith would be
Operative every day.
Tracy would be
Learning much.
And quickly.