Ordinary Time. Michael D. Riley
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will go soon. Why did I come
or linger? What hope throws stars
across the sky, ropes muscle into walking,
stalks every move tonight? I must be mad
or dreaming. I will leave. I will go home.
As soon as her song is done.
THE LAST SHEPHERD
I stayed here on the hill, with the flock.
Somebody had to. I told them, Don’t expect
me to run up and down after your
miserable thin sheep, but I’ll keep an eye
where I can. Fools need someone.
“Angels singing.” What next, for an upswing
of wind through scrub and fruitless dates.
If they studied the sky like I do
night after night on these rocks, they’d know
the elongated points on that star, its aura
like bright dust, its illusion of motion,
was not so unusual. I am no Roman,
but I have not spent my time collecting dust.
I have listened. I have even found reading
possible in bursts that thrilled my heart.
Yet here I sit watching the frost grow
over the stones that lie everywhere.
Against the cold I raise the wide sleeve
of this ragged wool cloak over my head,
left then right, until each arm locks up.
I must look like the temple cripple.
Rumor has it he raised his arm above
his head for years to praise and beg God for
. . . . . who knows. Then it froze, absurdly.
I pull my woolen holes together, for warmth.
I can see them kneeling and praying
in that cave’s weak light. What do they expect?
The Romans have a god for everything.
Why not? They rule the world. Made it, really.
Who’s to say? Their gods take good care of them.
Three of them are talking with their hands.
The other two walk silently, heads down.
Each one emerges from a cloud of frozen breath.
I will not embarrass them. Why should I?
We were children together. I will listen
closely, nodding my head. I will pray
with them. Yes. Why not? I cannot love
bitterness long. It is cold enough on these hills.
They have seen me. I wave back,
push the unburned twigs into the fire.
THREE IMAGES FOR CHRISTMAS
The snow came down on his questions
one deliberate flake at a time,
giving them outline and form,
identical white dust from where
he stood, soon reconfigured by boxwood,
sycamore, frozen gingko and holly knobs,
a world waiting to be covered
and made perfect: a single question
after all, so cold and so beautiful.
Ferns of crystal frost grow up each pane
of the front windows, a tiny jungle of light.
“It’s beautiful,” he thought, “if you can
survive in it.” But why any overlay
of beauty, in a world where
skin freezes, burns, lays open, dies?
Yet it haunts us everywhere,
as the soul of things, the whisper
in every silence, the silence under every sound.
As the sun rose, the jagged branches
retreated one tiny limb at a time,
an outline traced in vapor, the memory
of a voice just past, or passing.
Christmas fell as snow on his roof, sills,
shrubs, and jacket sleeves. It painted the north
side of the chimney white. Each bare tree lifted
arms to the snow that was anything but snow
filling the air with so many points of light,
the air knew at last what it was.
GRACE
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
—Zen proverb
In the blue-gray blur of this window
I find light enough for disbelief:
My child’s eye above this book of drawings,
no two alike, star-crossed hooks and eyes.
Yesterday, millions died in the gutters,
on lawns and sidewalks, melted on my sleeves
and shoulders, a glitter of brighter light
before the drab stain and chilled bone.
Today their disappearing hexagons
lock hands as far as my eye can guess.
They catch community and silence
in deeps unequaled in fifty years.
Stars fallen into dead weight, they bend
down our breath, shoveling to keep up.
Spring seals itself in crystal palaces.
All the lives of water fall and fill.
Galaxies of tiny lights wink out
in the junipers beside the small front porch.
Between them, one spotlight descends
like a diving bell, seeking the half-size creche
nearly buried in the Gothic alcove.
Kneeling cattle, lambs, shepherds have been
called home. Three kings have been deposed.
Joseph breathes through his nose above
the leaning drifts, bewildered as the rest of us.
All the way in, against the frozen door,
the child and his mother cannot stop smiling,
centered by the hushed and glowing snow.
INCARNATE
Embody
the great dream
God dreams into skin
tight with muscle,
bone, articulated ribs,
all flesh into desire.
Place