above Presque Isle’s iron-gray
outcroppings, its near wing
a smudge of indigo at the edge of my eye,
blurring like the shade
of the dead friend I thought
I saw crossing the sidewalk.
Days like this, the almost real
is more real than anything real.
My breath caught, seeing her
grasp the wrought-iron railing. Then, I watched
a stranger latch a gate. Today,
Saved for some new next world,
the double-eyed holes for the thread;
the toggle, the bone and pearl.
On the thick camel coat, the awl once guided the thread.
Packed like a multitude of silvery fish,
the deep dark they inhabit
at the bottom of the box. The flash
of the metal once holding peppermint
bark—lost scent of the mint.
Instead, out of the tin’s dents,
the strange summoned guilt in glint
of hard cold buttons, I feel for the dead and the absent.
(Roger Lundin 1949–2015)
before i was
and after i am not,
light lustrous
only light
and the One,
from beginning to beginning
i am,
as she died
the light gutters,
and after i am not.
As though some heavy stone were rolled away,
You find an open door where all was closed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.
Lost in your own dark wood, alone, astray,
You pause, as though some secret were disclosed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away.
You glimpse the sky above you, wan and grey,
Wide through those shadowed branches interposed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.
The ground is damp beneath the stand of trees
and dampness penetrates my winter shoes.
I choose from fallen branches, piece by piece,
mere sticks that cannot know their privileged use.
Just sticks—such humble things always remain
docile to nature’s processes—this wood
will dry now, warmed and sheltered from the rain,
and all inclemency of sky that could
delay its transformation into fuel
for Easter Vigil’s sacred rite of fire.
On wood did life and death engage to duel:
prodigious combat then, soon blazing pyre.
My Son, athirst
pressed tight
so up
against His
narrow Tree I see
from here
at His Feet
His Despair, their
disgust, at
what I now know
with simeon’s
sword-like thrust
what must
have come to pass
but is not yet
past; and
so, I aghast
at what
His Father hath
wrought
am too hard pressed
to know
why not quite yet
judas by all
others will be
accurst,save
by My Son
will someday be
blessed . . .