Today's poem is by Stephen Haven

Salem Easter
       

The inkwell of that royal purple
Smeared Easter on our fingertips:
Our lunch was an egg dyed
Onion-skin red on a seat cracked
For John Burroughs. Above us,
Five airy blue Eastern Orthodox bulbs
Trumped the plain cut truths
Of the old slate stones, our hands cold
Against those skulls, their crossed bones.
Then the mercy of dried flowers
In little gold piles, then the rows
Of less grave centuries, where masons
Winged the marbled dead to cherubs'
Lighter epiphanies. The trick
Of each reappearing dove
Fluttered in the wave of a silk red scarf.
In just a time of little matter
There were angels everywhere, lattes
Heavenly along the Wiccan shops,
Palm readings fifty bucks a pop,
The mall right down the road,
One kid on the Witch Walk
Riffing for his dinner in a topper
Calling to the crowd, Maybe we can
Even see them now. In cameo
A teenage shade blurred through
The clips of our chipped phones. . . .
Then beer, chowder, the softening harbor. . . .
We logged into Hawthorne's light,
Glad he was born there, the old Bay State
Tuned sharply to its minor key
Far from that other clef, the wicks
All Concord burned where he was buried.
We dreamed of a seaside condo, the train
To Boston, slapped sails tethered
To our late mornings. Seasoned
In that choir, singed in one hymn
With all the old-time barkers
We knew that in America
The deeper spirit is the darker.

Copyright © 2025 Stephen Haven All rights reserved
from The Flight from Meaning
Slant Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission