Easter 1991 (For Ellie)

1. Conviction

What I feel is the need to go home.
It's the old guilt calling.
It’s our mother's voice damning the sin
that she thought she knew.
To Huntington, Indiana,
to College Park
where they still sing hymns of repentance
and where families driven
or who have walked to a church bright with Easter
are cleansed with blood.

2. Confession

This a.m. I stood
and watched robins on a lawn
in Virginia.
Breasts orange in sun,
heads black,
bills jonquil yellow
as they probed the grass
and sang homecoming
recitals.

There were tulip buds,
blue eyelids of violets
in the grass.
I could hear the song,
pointing up, purling down,
of a cardinal,
the Peabody song,
returned now,
of the white-crowned sparrow.

All were home at last,
birds and birdsong
and flowers together,
an event so fine
in covenant
with the weather
that this space in time
became sacred
and a part of forever.

3. Reflection

The lawn was green,
grown up in the night and unfenced.
Strong backs had lent
their strength to the making of this place
and a strong blade bent
to sharpen the edge of the beds
where the curves were made.

Grass shone, its penumbra of dew in the sun
showed white
where dew returned rays to the sun.
I stood alone,
felt a grief that I couldn’t remember
while like startled thieves,
starlings shrugged off loss of sweet leavings
and like leaves were gone.

It's on days like these, full of sun,
that the mind expands
past the simple wish for forgiveness
and a second chance
to the thought of a child’s survival.
Not a certain chance,
not a chance you’d put a bet on as sure,
“pretty good” you're told;
so you hold
and expect no regrets.
Then your whole hand folds.

4. Repentance

And this is how mourning begins:
first birds begin
and you see first signs of first light.
You feel time crouch,
jump up and rush forward,
crouch again
like the neighbor's cat
that is white and makes a patch
like a bandage.

It’s as if at last
you make peace with your father
and mother,
accept intention,
not by prayer or by act of contrition
for things undone,
but the sudden
unexpected recognition
that the phone won't ring,
not now, not ever
for forever.

I believe it's true
that in their coming together
there was more of blue
and green
and the yellow of chartreuse
than there was of red.
They are dead now
and I know that I miss them.

5. Remembering

I have always dismissed resurrection,
knew our flesh was knit
like a sweater
to the fit of our bones
and so I came
to distribute my weight over water
and learned to swim
in quarries
from which limestone was taken.

If there’s a room
that as a child I should want to return to,
it would be the room in Philomath
where I hung up maps,
where the walls leaned in
as if wanting to share in my secrets,
and the dream I had was the dream
of a big-nosed Brazil.

Other dreams I’ve had
in subsequent years
left me wanting.
Take the Christmas lights
that were many and bright in my childhood,
songs sung were white,
open-mouthed,
in the crisp Christmas air;
now “Christ” is a word when I swear
and no songs ring out.

6. Fasting

Every day is a day of reparation
and the face you wear
is the face of our mother’s mother.
She staked a claim
that is blood long, life strong
and persistent.

Our faces change
from the time we are born to defacement.
We watch them change,
not always happy with the change.
We are so like grass,
persisting in the patterns of our youth

as we slowly pass
from one attachment to another
to arrive at last
at the memory of the place we began,
at our mother's face.

7. Communion

So I think of shrikes
and clusters of thorns on a tree,
and the way a life
is shredded and hung up like old clothes
not even laundered.

John's Bread, I've heard locust pods called
of a polished leather
so hard they make car tires squeak
and adorn the street,
more hardy
than hard winter squash,
even winter wheat.

Locust seeds have the polish of flint,
but can be ground
and made of necessity into bread,
not a bread I'd eat,
not gladly,
if baked without leaven.

It's quite a leap
from locusts and honey to heaven
and requires wine.
A straight line
may not be the shortest
and it does take time.