Ordinary Time. Michael D. Riley
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on a metaphoric heart
no one will ever see, reenacted
by a mind/brain as impossible
to believe in as the soul
Because absurdity is love believing
in belief itself, “evidence” of things not seen
to energize the crossed paradox
consciousness cooperates to raise
upon a hill no one can find
outside an ahistorical story
Because of the absurdity of believing
God’s mind opened like a tomb,
pried dead flesh up as with a spoon
and threaded bones together in the air
Because absurdity must sing itself to sleep
in belief, for nothing else will do,
will ever do, and nothing
will never do, so the jest
of thinking confesses yet again
“Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled”
said the very old to the very young,
so we are told. And tell.
A PRAYER FOR FIRST LIGHT
You worked while I was sleeping,
spirit slumped against the sill,
a blank house, an old address,
stale smells and dust.
I tilted up the cellar door
for a shovel’s freight of coal
slid down the silvered chute
into the old neighborhood.
I slumbered in ash, conformed
to the ashman’s wagon
as it trailed the morning fog
past our stoop all winter.
Heard the city sparrows cry
hunger over the tarred housetops,
third-shifters fumble for their keys,
first bayings from the slaughterhouse.
You ordered the sun up at last
over the foundry’s pouring smokestack.
Window frost melted the past.
And I rose up, as you see, singing.
INVITATION
Come to the manger.
See the crossed
leg-brace rehearse.
Come to the manger
now. New breath
rises. Eyes clear.
Come to the manger
from anywhere.
Encompass one star.
Come to the manger
without distinction. Rejoin
the peaceable kingdom.
Come to the manger.
Straws of gold
nail up the light.
Come to the manger
tonight. Sheep plead
for the sleeping hills.
Come to the manger
along the old roads, singly
or together. Come as you were.
Come to the manger
over land and water. Air
will feed you. And fire.
Come to the manger
modest with miracle,
rebirth and rebirth.
Come to the manger
without frankincense or shoes.
Bring only your hunger
for what you dream
you cannot bear to lose.
ADVENT
Tugging his shoulders after him,
flimsy rake tines tremble through leaves
dank and flat as stripped skin.
Down his thighs his muscles grieve
their work under pewter skies.
December’s stainless steel winds
incise the bared face of his alibis.
He is naked neck to shins
under these clothes, and alone.
Roots beneath his feet, he’s been told,
hold these waving branches down.
He feels how deep they are. And cold.
The necessary work lags, stalls
against this iron ground freezing
into permanence. He pulls
night closer with every swing.
Painfully, he leans forward.
Indistinct mounds surround him.
The moon disappears. He looks toward
the house, its sharp edges growing dim.
Soon he must go in. The wind
is rising, nailing leaves to the trees
and his rake again. The ground
beneath one golden window glows.
ADVENT SONG: WOODEN ANGEL
She knows.
She tries to tell the traffic
moiling through the blowing surge,
peach-pink streetlights
just coming on, fuzzy with snow.
They cannot hear her
for their radios and icy wipers.
The snow collects light
despite the growing dusk.
She heralds its glowing
reflection, its hoarded joy,
sun and moon somewhere else,
just gray light enough
to release my window panes
and set embroidered animals
dancing. An old engine,
the radiator steams
beneath the windows.
I fill one chair.
My angel of the sill
welcomes me also
with her wooden horn,
but I am not the one
she has waited for
seed to split to trunk
in that wide stand of pine