Today's poem is by Kimberly Johnson
Easter, Looking Westward
1.
The stars! the stars have fled the sky!
Scratch thatthe 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 tenderlyI 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 bentto glory. Scratch thatto sufficiency.
Start again: The stars are black with storms
blown shoreward; the dinoflagellatessmacked on the shoals leak light from shattered cells;
they phosphoresce the breakers in their roister.
Let me sing, then, the beauty of creaturesmicroscopic, 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
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