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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
You, yes, you. On the porch glider of memory,
thinking again of your grandmother’s grease-
stained kitchen and how she saved you. You,
in the first snow of the year, the burdened photinia
limbs, the night’s blue note. I mean you. You
who’ve been griping and gnashing your teeth
in the constant upheaval—not just our country’s
bruised fist, but the world entire, its tectonics adrift.
It was your idea, when the roll was called up yonder,
to take up your pallet, to rise like Lazurus,
his winding sheet of myrrh and aloe trailing behind.
To say, Me, I’ll go. I’ll go to that time, that cliff
and split sky, that rage of brother against brother
against sister, unfriending right and left.
Left from right. It’s my time. My time to be
a lighthouse, to shine far and wide over veined
stones and broken vows alike, though my heels
bleed, my steps falter. My time to march
on the winter streets and hold high my sign:
God is watching you kill.
Remember
your Ecclesiastes: Time and chance happen
to us all. And what will you do with this time,
this chance to sweep your beam along the rocky
shoreline, to pull whoever outlasted the nor’easter
back to breath? This is your time—to spend
like a wastrel or shower the heavens with a gracious
plenty. You engine of steam and plow. You
shoulder to the squeaky wheel. You asked for it.
You volunteered to help turn the tide
and guide this mother home.
