Heron
Great blue heron, white in high green,
folds on self, forward falls toward water,
clear space, wingspan wind-catch, rise in flight.
I am semi-trailer truck in someone else’s tender canoe
— steep banks through suburbs, six crows
from one bank to the other frenzy a hawk,
mud raccoon handprints,
duckweed green scum.
I will never return to this river.
Forty days and nights on
rising waters, they alone
kept the breath of life in
their nostrils across the face
of the seas. The raven, gone,
and then the low pigeon,
back, with green hope.
These words written
on back of page proving evolution,
going back to start, original sin
— as if the heron were showing off,
as if God seeded evil,
as if Jesus was a mutation,
as if pain meant,
as if anyone could make me understand anything.
Here, twenty years after heron's fall,
bird, instruct me, odd, tall, thin, long creature.
Explain cell division, tock-tick and falling to fly,
neither evil nor good.
Liberty
On Bedloe's Island, ducking
the tour, I stowed away
and, at night, when all
bodies had emptied out
of the body, found the
command deck where,
with a touch of a button,
I opened Lady Liberty’s
heavy copper eyes and I
could see where I was
going when, moments
later, I pushed ignition
for lift-off from the launch
pad, and we — statue
body and I, Lady and
I — were on our way to
space orbit where I
looked down on grim
Covid globe, social
distanced as I’d been
for months in that two-flat
on Paulina Street, this
copper-steel-iron angel
just another tin can, like
my ‘06 Scion, no magic
dust to sprinkle over the
good earth to disappear
the contagion and hug each
Jane and Joe with chaste
safety, no glad tidings to
bring of a savior born, no
kings with gifts for a
Gethsemane planet
yearning to breathe free.
Odyssey
Face of God, name
of God, child death
in every home,
Egyptian, Israelite, Canaanite
— let people go —
sea split, walled water,
tabernacle and gold god,
frogs, lice, hail,
locusts, boils,
blood, blood, blood,
ten commands,
doorposts, manna,
rock water,
hard heart,
seabed, stiff neck,
wilderness, mountaintop,
light rays, cloud,
fire, treaty
— hold still
and see salvation —
flight, arrival, exile,
name of God, face
of God,
— wander alpha to omega,
from end to start,
from freedom to slavery
and back —
breathe, breathe,
breathe,
milk-honey land,
pox, pox, pox,
slaves, victims,
bodies,
new world, new nation,
manifest, faith,
creation,
garden,
empty, open.
And, then,
again.