We are made of ink and into ink
we shall perish. Our history survives
in fire soot and boneblack pigment.
Carbon fingerprints tell our telling
and dust writes to dust
as we make our voices heard
on papyrus, vellum, paper.
Ink gyves our identities in gall
and gum. Ink gives us life
then consigns to death.
Church registries say that
once we were here.
But even as our names fade in ink,
they will be read in the Lamb’s book
without fear of blot or blur.
Those starlings,
that crowd of black wings
patterning the noon sky,
flow along a highway invisible,
unknown to us, we without
wings, stiff, anchored,
eyes on the rutted road beneath our feet.
How to look up. To risk
looking up, perhaps to lose
our footing in the enchantment of
cloud splendor, the heaven-
sent stabs of sunlight, the arrival
of rain on our dry fields,
our yearning hearts.
What if the Second Coming
has already come,
and those fearful faces,
expecting judgment to rain down
from the tormenting skies
(lifting the raptured
and leaving the rest of us behind),
had it all wrong?
Maya Angelou // Haji Chilonga’s On Red Dress
It’s those familiar scenes
beyond the hollowed tomb—
the sudden surprise meeting
with the gardener who knows my name—
that sunset sabbath journey,
approaching stranger, wayside inn,
the evening meal, the certain way
the bread was broken—
the breakfast on the shore at daybreak,
gentle invitation, driftwood fire,
crisp, fragrant fish on glowing coals,
the walk along the sand, those questions.
I can see myself among them
as they shared a meal, a word, a presence,
maybe even laughed together
from Epistles to Eve
Everyone should write a spring poem, Louise Gluck
Perpetually repeating spring
in the azaleas on my street,
lush parade of parables
I can’t decipher yet,
configuring, configuring—
Why are you given to me
this black morning, the little hearses
lining my soul already parked,
ready for ascent or explosion
depending on my grip
on this blossoming,
my unasked-for gift?
Here nothing moves, the water
waiting, still as glass, amid
the cattails’ silent stalks while
over there across the sea,
fire shreds the sky, exploding as
buildings crumble, mired in
blood.
So how to hold the all of it,
the killing field and this spring
pool where water shivers once
and wakes to wood frogs’ rising
croaking chorus that, startled
by my presence, stops—only
to begin again.
If a lion roars, who does not tremble? (Amos 3:8)
if a bomb
falling
in the poem
explodes
will it
be heard
amidst
lines
words
and no metaphor
worthy
of its actuality
come now
let us
together
in chorality
summon
the names
above the noise
names
never again mute
Mariupol
Donetsk
Luhansk
Kharkiv
Zhytomyr
Berdychiv
Chornobyl
Christ comes, a knock on the door when I least
expect him. Espresso in hand I pop open
the screen door that sticks in every kind
of weather. Peace be with you, he breathes
as he brushes by, sniffing for toast,
an egg, some fish. We eat our breakfast
in the too-small nook, our four knees
touching beneath the table. We find
little to discuss, though lots has happened
over the last two thousand years,
disaster since he last appeared
become our daily bread. His lined
face says he knows what we don’t say.