January 26, 2009

Matthew 8

Atrophy and decades
of decaying springs compressing
constitute a difficulty in movement
for forcibly anorexic bones.
But a father is laying on me,
so with lanky clacks of
ligamentless joints I dig up.

I've been here beneath
man-pulled wagons (like the one
that dumped me over wooden sides),
beneath tar and pitch cabins,
legends of dragons and battlegrounds,
beneath hooves of cows and back lawns
and white fences, folding chairs and
yawning women under radiant sun.

And I've never been aroused for
the duties of digging another,

there has always been son or brother
to deal with death. I mean,
dying leaves dry on the trees, forest floor
or underneath. Why the urgency?

The living long to bury quickly
before a fever of memory, before
tears on stately black lapels
have evaporated into grieving.

So what has seized the breathing man
with morbid fervor and unity
of purpose and movement, that lightly
he turned back on lifeless father,
decomposing into my likeness,
and left him here upon my plot,
his resting place undug?

Perhaps, no, has he found life
and left the death to God and to me?