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End times

The doctors say
we are all terminal.
We swallow pills,
navigate blood-soaked terrain.

The Reaper pokes his head in
to ask directions.  We lift
our lanterns, stare out startled
into the dark.

Our bodies will enter earth and fire,
the dust from which we came.
We fall into the mouths of old lovers,
ride the wings of dragonflies.

We seek one last embrace,
the taste of an apple,
the comfort of an old coat,
a page from an unfinished book.

Flannery’s company

“A serious fiction writer describes an action only in order to reveal
a mystery. Of course, he may be revealing this mystery to himself
at the same time as he is revealing it to everyone else.”

                              —Flannery O’Connor

 

Transfiguration in North Minneapolis

Blinding white, the sudden wings beat
in front of my windshield, as if
the gull had dropped from a horizon
of sapphire sea and chalk-bright cliff
instead of this dreary March sky
hanging low over a parking lot edged with a Dollar Tree, a Taco Bell,
black-crusted snow.

I watched him ascend, dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach. . . .
wings that might have flown straight from the womb
of the first day.

 

Passing through

In this uncertain human season,
I sometimes shiver with despair,
And yet today, a cold dark dawn,
A flock of migrants burst through
Mist, winged flames of orange,
Yellows, blue, to set the flowering
Trees alight; warblers, buntings,
Orioles, like prayer flags flying,
They flit and feast, God’s table
Spread for all who come, diverse,
Resplendent, passing through,
This host of pilgrims here–now–
Gone.