their gullets stuffed with handouts, while you soar
over the oaks with dreaming clouds, with the glare
and glimmer of the distant but holy sun
in your misunderstood eyes, your paeans one
with the wind. Yet it was you who, perched on the shoulder
of Jesus, watched him suffer and heard him cry,
and it was you who saw the enormous boulder
moved, and you who saw him enter the sky.
Similar Posts
On the black river’s shore a nettle
The underside of the iron bridgespans both the water and the glade.Rusty as a pipe or kettle,ghost trains traverse rails to a ridgewhere folks set in their ways age cheese,keg beer and eat perpetual stew.The milk and malt stored in wood vats,the deep bowls of brown broth and rue,the honey and the combs of bees,are…
Today I leaf through the obituaries
an actress, doctor, and philanthropist—the stories of their lives take up a page.But I recall my neighbour, Betty Amos,who, with beads wrapped round a gnarled fist,attempted to cure cancer with Hail Marys,never letting faith succumb to rage.There is no mention of her name at all,no words relating kindnesses and deeds,how she brought us apples in…
Over the valley, down into the wood,
a raven soars beneath the summer sun.The elder chłopi say none have appearedfor many seasons, having understoodat last the ways of man. For on the flanksof the old hill, no hare or vole had runacross the plush green grasses. Drought had searedthe soil; and industry had promised gain.The young and able have moved far away,and…
The father looks up to the sky or ceiling
with his son wrapped inside his cradling arms.An orderly obscures the boy’s midsection,with silence says he is beyond all healing.Outside the frame in colour copter straferestokes the ire of Taliban gendarmeswho soothe the mother twisted in dejection.We do not catch a whiff of her pained retching,catch sight of their clenched fists or hear their words.We…
You turn your thoughts away from your own yard,
The bell rings and you’re running down the hallsof the old school past frog-faced Mrs. Swarduntil you reach a desk, a wobbly onewith “Johnny loves Annette” engraved on it.You look out of the window at the litblast furnaces, the molten morning sunthat was your immigrant pop’s bread and butter.His heavy accent lingers in your mind,his…
Some nights are never-ending hells
We do not hand out pills, but shells,as out of battlefields they starefrom over sixty years agoon far-off Guam or Guadalcanal.With trembling hands they try to showhow the bravest or youngest fell.We console them with a cold cup,and a tender tap on the shoulder.What haunts them, though, will not give up,nor the fallen boys grow…