Epiphany from Issue 91/92
Wine-dark, I rise to leave
My dreaming son and daughter
And walk down to the sea to watch
The blessing of the water.
Bells sluice the white-washed village
With buckets of clear sound;
About the church in hats and boots
The chilled folk gather round
Clutching plastic bottles
And waiting for the sign
The priest has blessed the water
That wasn’t turned to wine.
In faux-fur, wool, or leather,
(Me in my beat-up Barbour),
We make up a procession
That shuffles to the harbor
Where the priest mounts the prow
Of the blue Fishhook Express;
A black knit cap and scarf completing
Ecclesiastical dress.
He casts a wood cross out
And reels it in on a tether
Three times, while everyone complains
Brightly about the weather,
And admires the three bold youths,
Or chuckles and calls them mad,
The poor young men who shiver,
Inadequately clad.
And then the wood cross sails
Far out with a whirling toss,
And there’s a churn of swimmers,
And victory, and loss,
And the boat horns low like cattle.
Then photographs and laughter,
And people greet and turn to go
Or meet for coffee after.
A world of light and water
Of silver, gold, and blue
Is wheeling all around us:
That’s what islands do.
The sun peeps, the horizon
Gleams like a fishing line
Out over the stone-cold water
That does not turn to wine.
Jigsaw Puzzle from Issue 85
First, the four corners,
Then the flat edges.
Assemble the lost borders,
Walk the dizzy ledges,
Hoard one color—try
To make it all connected—
The water and the deep sky
And the sky reflected.
Absences align
And lock shapes into place,
And random forms combine
To make a tree, a face.
Slowly you restore
The fractured world and start
To recreate an afternoon before
It fell apart:
Here is summer, here is blue,
Here two lovers kissing,
And here the nothingness shows through
Where one piece is missing.