Easter, Looking Westward

1.

The stars! the stars have fled the sky!—
Scratch that—the stars have skyed the flood, the sea
glimmering in pale beneath a starless black. . .

2.

No, scratch that too. I'm all exotic
metaphor, inkhorn snarls, never content
with the unelaborated thing;

always the forced apotheosis,
every least sparrow a visible sign,
strong-arming water to wine. So tenderly

I love this world's profane loveliness,
its small, scarce loveliness, like a puritan
I batter magnitude out of homespun.

3.

Faithless my zeal, for the puritan's faith
imputes us all with a roughhouse grace, most
lovely in our brokenness, bruised and bent

to glory. Scratch that—to sufficiency.
Start again: The stars are black with storms
blown shoreward; the dinoflagellates

smacked on the shoals leak light from shattered cells;
they phosphoresce the breakers in their roister.
Let me sing, then, the beauty of creatures

microscopic, who make the vastness gleam
in smithereens.

4.

                                        See: starlike, after all.

Copyright © 2006 Kimberly Johnson All rights reserved
from The Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission