January 11, 2009

Matthew 3

Fireworks subsiding,
fluorescent basement bulbs
break the dawn.
My limbs and twigs arc
in brilliant white streaks
toward the violet Berber
that my own hands laid.
Thoughtful branches laden
with pomegranates and figs,
wheat and grain pastries and
a cold cup of leftover grapes.
In the winter season, in the newness,
promise and purpose warm the vines
and all that stirs my wakening
seems ripe to prune and type.
Strange that as spring clutters
with rain, mud, and end of the year
boxes of leftover grades
i will wither quicker.
i am no tamarix, green throughout
all seasons, but with no fruit.
My sticks produce in cycles,
fruit in keeping with confession, but so dry
when the world around explodes with life.

Day 7: Evening

Matthew 7

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it..."

The old and aged entered between the whitest blooms,
between the spring and summer.
The last garden spread before them.

We, brimming with our new life,
had entered on the side of dying,
and death: the fall and the winter.

It made me think of the gates,
of hell and of heaven.
We think we get in based on how

we thought that we had lived.
i wonder, is it the way that we died
that leads to new life;

what we die to resurrects anew.
They came in from the bright sun,
the path one sees as wide.

Their faces shone upon living
orchids, vibrant orange lilies,
and highest, efflorescing hydrangeas;

But despite rain, sun and soil
they are headed toward death.
December plants now are brown twigs cut down,

and we are empty, hungry and poor,
but skinny kids fit through narrow doors,
and so we are heading toward life.