Everything
Once tidied and put away, beneath
The long flat wait of winter,
Is jumbled up now
All together-
Hope and penance, mud and memories,
Prayers, snowdrops, robin birds.
Domains are being readied
For the season of propagation and increase,
Under the comet's ghostly maneuvers.
Planted in the swing and bang of
The beginning,
Harrowed and divided by the stretch of stars,
Propelled with insistence into Holy Week,
We are yoked with a thousand years of senarios.
So Easter day comes
Hanging heavy and unredeemed.
The Christ is risen
But the shiver is still there-
Heavy breathing war horses groaning across England,
And A10 warthogs shreiking over desert in Nevada and Iraq.
The same night
Choirboys fling joy at the rafters,
Trembling the clerestory with angelic vibration,
We stand in corn stubble and cow field,
Watching the bad star.
Collecting, from rooftop and balcony,
In angled mirror and wide lens,
The dust and spangle of
Our collective imagining, that,
Borne in the comet's fag end,
Is our history and our almanac.
© 1999
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