Communion

I.

The red river on its way
through the countryside,
spilling its watery inferno;
the grace of day turning toward night,
and moment of moon’s first light.

At the end of the sun,
we shall see the stars appear
as faraway fires in other realms,
nesting in the night’s blue blanket.

II.

In chastised candor
the truth was seen as a veritable order,
the beauty became a sluggish
slave to time’s demeanor,
the light became a blindness to our eyes,
the path too difficult to find.

When once you loved,
the way was sought in purity,
your destiny was a joyful reunion
with eternity,
upon your head was placed a crown,
and now life’s burden has buried
mercy in the rubble,
taken our very soul,
dashed our son to pieces on the ground,
reduced his life to eating mud;
now hatred rules all.


III.

With your fair light
a thousand truths become one,
the night, your velvet gown,
the peace of nations, your bodice,
their seas, your diamonds,
their eyes, your emeralds,
their blood, your rubies.

And you dance with
the wild soul of the sky,
the old trees
rooting to paradise;
you move with the raucous wind,
delighting the sun and moon,
relinquishing the shadow,
smothering
the afterbirth.

IV.

We walked along the
cobblestones of the old graveyard,
revisiting the silent epitaph,
reading the right to life
after death to each invisible angel,
saying good-bye to old friends.

Where the lilies are carefully placed,
white adorning the cold stone,
peace and purity to the next life,
tranquility and serenity
to the sleep...

V.

The moon is my candle,
flickering in summer’s residual balm,
the sky is my ocean,
breaking upon an eternal shore,
the bread is my communion
with a holy God,
the wine is the outpouring
of his blood.

Where we lie in the dust,
spent with work and
old with journey,
the creases of our brow echo
the prayers of a sainted cathedral,
the stones cast down
one upon the other;
our stained glass eyes
see the moment of truth
and eternity.

Where, like a cathedral in ruins,
I fell,
after death
I will rise,
into the great still sky
weathering the storm of years
and fury of tears.

VI.

You are not cold but warm,
you are not false but true,
and the instrument accompanies you,
the music becomes you.

Black notes soaring into heaven:
the great divide,
the silent plea,
hear my prayer.

We are not two but one,
we are not separated by years,
the light wins out over darkness,
and candle lights the way
before us.

VII.

The rice-rose alabaster,
the night held still sill;
the sonnet of the door,
and shape of moon.

The pathos of spring
that death cannot unbind
nor love remove.

VIII.

From the silent winter came
the sudden bud of green,
a regal queen of beauty all
unfading and supreme.

Silver light upon her brow,
sage of the petal and the daffodil,
the empress sea, an azure gild
to far shores of sable and of gold.

Tall, stately, and without fear,
a plentiful garden at first prayer;
the nation bows before your tower,
and the government
shall be upon His shoulders.