Easter Triptych: 3 Sonnets

That spring there was a party on the farm
when the severed stalks of corn were stubble
jutting from the muck like half-submerged
pilings of a rotting dock, and someone
had parked their car in the middle of the field--
it looked so strange, like an abandoned boat
off-balance and embarrassed to be left
leaning on land where drought had leeched the sea
away around it. It was Easter morning
I remember now, and halleluiah
rang from drunken lips around a keg
floating like a buoy in the crowd.
Faithless, we felt something of God then
gathered together, wishful fishers of men.

Gathered together, wishful fishers of men
we made our mark, if not on the world,
in the manure and the mud spread for corn
until our sneakers were ruined and our shirts
torn from dodging into the bordering woods
to take a leak or purge. As the day wore on,
more and more music mingled like strangers
at a bar, weaving and winking from speakers
strapped to backs in the crowd, and from the car.
One dude passed out, and we carefully laid him
in the backseat. He was there three hours
a halo of his own vomit around his head.
Even those who didn’t know him cheered when he rose
and tore off across the field without his clothes.

Torn off a cross, scarecrow without his clothes,
the sack of rotten husks became our football
punted and passed from hands to drunken hands.
Next came fire, breaking branches, bics
tipped into the mess of sticks and six-pack boxes
prepared for our revel’s scapegoat. Viking burial
in honor of the crows. Our dead mock Fawkes
with his bled grin spinning in the sparks
gave warmth the sun yet couldn’t. Then it spread,
it caught a stalk, and the whole row fucking blazed
corn like candles. We all went down on our knees
and beat the matchsticks out with muddy hands
and sneakers. Cold once more, small clouds of smoke
bloomed from our mouths like dandelions when we spoke.





2017

A vision

the angels, they were everywhere
faces molten as mercury
thin as water, thick as air
flecking the dark like porphyry

through them I saw the girded world
bound by good fences, shuttered tight
which could not clot an ounce of God
or dim a lumen of his light

then all our artefacts and craft
the trappings rigged around his name
these fell away and God was left
naked and trembling, like a flame

Like Psyche

I watched her crouched and howling with the sun
sitting on her shoulder, and the moon
tucked behind her ear. I saw days run
up and down her spine, and the year turn
a daisy chain of hours in her hair.

She swallowed stones and spat out meteors
that blazed thru minds grown dark and unaware
of their capacity for storms and stars.
Then she became horizon. Dusk and dawn
sprung from her back like wings. I heard her cry
like Psyche when that finger of flame fell on
Love’s lips like loss. I saw her try to fly,

shattering in the glory that unfurled,
and how those rags of light patched up the world.

Frère Egbert

Frère Egbert, suddenly unsure
the world was sinful, doubled down on scripture--
He beat his breast, he harrowed his back with cords
wore haircloth, gardened in the snow, he wept
he crept upon his knees from Nice to Lourdes
fasted till nearly dead, and wished he were so--
yet every time he looked outside the window
he saw birds

Nightmare

That night a malevolent mind subdued my mind
and held me in a vise of vile despair
as mute as stone, as tangible as air
insensible and cold and ill-defined
it clumsily and crudely pantomimed
inflections of your gesture, flesh, and hair
facing me with a face that wasn’t there
all grew so dark, I thought that I was blind
then felt by darkness as by hands caressed
who is this corpse that lodges in my bed?
Lazarus rising, dying, or undead?
What ghoul that will not let me let it go?
Shifting in silent agony and slow
I woke, and found it still upon my chest.

Angel in the ice

It was winter when I found the angel
frozen in the lake. Its eyes were bright
like berries served on silver cheeks, its wings
were wrinkled banners furled against its back
its mouth was open, and I felt a strange
hunger howling in my gut, and fear
at how its figure, contorted among red rags
looked like an emperor’s chop spelling my name
and the snow piled on my shoulders and my hat.
It was a flock of geese that broke the spell
leistering the sky with cries. I ran
home to the cabin’s hearth, where father asked
why I’d taken so long and if I’d brought
the fish for supper, and why my eyes were wet.

In the cloister library vault

Behold the word made flesh, the flesh made thin
the thin made hungry. Furled like fleurs-de-lys
famished silverfish back-stitch and trim
through manuscripts on shining filigree
legs, as if the letters and the petals
holding their breath in illuminated pages
were lifted free and life lit in their metals.
Here is a body bearing out sin’s wages:
inside this book a thousand silver spears
a thousand silver nails in parchment palms;
When we turn the cover back some years
later, to preserve the dead with balms
regretting our neglect, prepared to grieve,
we’ll find the body missing, and believe.