Three Poems

December 01, 2015

 Dali's Christ on the Cross

I look down like a father

      on your luxuriant head of burnished hair,

             so damp with anguish and despair.

Your arms stretched taut against the cross,

      pectoral muscles twisted and taut in final agony.

Your hands are frozen, rigid in trauma,

      raw, rough clouts driven through the palms,

             all tenderness stolen from your gentle touch.

Stifled, like drowning, your hands and ankles carry

      the full weight of your body.

From above, where I am, the afternoon light

      illuminates your earthly form and the cross

             lacquering it all with suggestive sunshine,

                   suspending both against the black, vacuous sky.

This is a vertiginous perspective,

      I don't feel comfortable here.

Better for me to be kneeling beneath this cross,

      or, like a humble fisherman beside his boat,

             drawing in salty nets in simple acts beside a lake,

                   awed and forever thankful

                         for the magnitude of this offering.

           

Resurrection Sunday

A glorious unveiling, lightning, presence,

                 a tearing, releasing, breathless running.

             News that exploded like soul searing fission,

                for Jerusalem, Empire, Age, a tired Earth.

             But a touching, a healing, a balm like no other,

                the bunting of grace in the shards of cruelty,

                   the banner of joy for the grimace of sadness.

The Visitation

I remember them well.

Moments that were

      meant for metaphors,

             the lightning brightness

                   of his visitation.

No words matched the

      thrown open shutters

             of his festive presence.

More than angling sunshine

      through a bedroom window,

Or sky wide evening embers

      in this winter valley.

Like a Lutheran steeple that

      snatched my breathing,

             surprising my laughter

                with its burnished brilliance.

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