Melting Sabbath

I.

When you wake, boundaries disappear. Snow caps

Like soft wisps of silver hair tinge the trees’

Knobbled fingers the color of vast above:

The barbed barrier between earth and sky dissolves.

 

No more must you slouch on the sidewalk’s rusty pew.

No more must you listen to the metallic choir’s honking.

No more must you cough on an exhaust pipe’s incense,

Staring as salvation is reduced to a procession

Of glaring headlights. The street is empty.

 

Reclaim the frozen morning.

Let the snowflakes drifting into your hair baptise you.

Seize the clouds for rosary beads and pray

That you might dance in this snow globe cathedral.

Peace be with the invisible, the inaudible—

This imprecise perfection. Eucharist is nothing

If not crystallized symmetry landing

On your outstretched tongue. In the name of the

Winter, the silence, this windblown creed: amen.

 

II.

Blades of grass skewering the snow,

Earthy colors bleeding through sledding tracks—

Was it all a facade, this temple inside out,

This blizzard hush turned melting sabbath?

 

III.

Tomorrow you’ll forget what’s beyond

The buzzing sludge that clogs your ears.

And later, when your shuffling boots again stick

To the sidewalk, and Wednesday sun shoves

The sky out of the way, and the last wistful flurries

Float onto your forehead like alabaster ashes,

You’ll brush them off impatiently, for the barbed wire—

Border between brittle branch ends and infinite blue—

Will have finally resolidified.

 

 

 

This piece was previously published in Crossroads.