A SECRET

A Partridge in a Pear Tree
(In the carol, the Partridge stands for Christ.)
Courtesy Dreams from a Pilgrimage

Even in the cold
The pear tree blossoms form,
Though honesty is sold
And holiness deformed

Even if the Church
Itself were sold and spent,
Still from every branch
Would grow a sacrament

Even if the tree
Were sacrificed for wood,
A secret bended knee
Is honor understood

THEY PRINT THEIR NAMES

Into the woods after the rain
Small feet print the river side,
Creatures gone, the prints remain
The river bank is smooth and wide

River sand inscribed with notes,
Writing on the river bank,
Symbols that the possums wrote,
The current passes brown and blank

Whoever writes must write on sand,
Whoever lives must know the same,
While on the verge of floods they stand
They gaze across and print their names

THAT ONE ITSELF

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Like the great heron
Whose three-toed tracks
Printed the smoothed embankment
Of a river in spate
God
Remains out of sight

Before that day
Those floating wings
That one itself
Moved upriver
Seeking below
A nest in the trees

She knew Jimmy Hugh when he was four,
And now he’s buried deep in Utahville—
Who would keep his features any more,
The swept, cut grass, the steep green hill
In memory that will some near-come day
Sweep like grass and sliding sun away?

He died may be in some forgotten war
That no one will remember any more—
Is it not strange as any ghost to see
Someone dead, alive in memory?
Who do we inhabit now, in some
Tremendous inner vision, deathless one?

And which identity and face comprise
The name, the self that looked out through those eyes?

CRAP SHOOTERS

Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), “Crucifixion”
Musée du Louvre; originally San Zeno, Verona
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Sacrifice—
You might say
He was not thanked
Anyway
That’s what you get
When you stick out your neck—
For his traps
They shot craps

In the world of dice
Love chance
Romance
Adventure
At a venture
Though even a wise guy
Dies—
But not twice

When He will die
The wise guys wager—
First hour
Next hour
After that hour
The winner to win
A bushel of flour—
Not when He will rise

On that
No one bets,
They still don’t
Yet
The odds
Are so long
That the point
Is God

THE ONLY SIGN OF LIFE

John Biggs (Contemporary), Image from “Stalin Will Never Be Redeemable”
Courtesy Current Affairs, March 2023

When Stalin died
No one at the station came to greet him
The platform deserted, the green train dropped him off
In the midst of a dry plain, scrub and yellow dust
But nothing else
Where were his aides, his bodyguards?
Had he descended solo?
The long train was gone

And Stalin looked around.
Stationmaster!
No one answered, and the earthly shadows did not move
It was late in the afternoon
And there was no long dry wind to blow
Over the flat scrub plain—
Of Kazakhstan?

Who is there?
Inside the heavy door he found a ticket counter
But when he peered across the board he saw
A sun bar on the wall, diagonal
But nothing, no one there
Between himself and that unyielding stripe

Empty. No one has come out to greet me.
He went looking for the lavatory
To wash his hands and face
But when he turned the faucets only dust came out
A puff, a sigh, and that a little only—
He gazed up to the speckled mirror, saw his own pale face
Unreadable expression
Yet perhaps some puzzlement?
It was the only sign of life

So many people died
But have they all died now?

GOD’S KILLER KILLED

A dead hawk is no joke to end—
It takes four billion years to make a hawk—
But God has all of time to spend

A four pound female redtail had collapsed,
Her plunging beak and talons seemed as iron,
Bright ankles yellower than buttercups

Her death-dulled eye comes close to me,
Peers narrowly from death’s stronghold
Invincibly

When I was soaring overhead to scare the wrens
You were plodding underneath—
I saw you then

It was a cold white wind that left me here,
So fierce and quick—
I turned the dead hawk over with a stick

I turned her over just to find a wound,
A puncture mark, a spot of blood,
Some injury that made life relict in this wood

There was nothing red to see—unspotted still
The brown-flecked ivory breast, the swept-back wings,
God’s killer killed

A SECRET

Even in the cold
The pear tree blossoms form,
Though honesty is sold
And holiness deformed

Even if the Church
Itself were sold and spent,
Still from every branch
Would grow a sacrament

Even if the tree
Were sacrificed for wood,
A secret bended knee
Is honor understood