No Savior


 

My religion is simple.

Let us pray.

No Savior but the second coming

of a scavenger kitten

trembling in my flashlight beam

by the pantry door.

No Holy Mother,

just the crone selling cherry bombs

on the Third of July

at the Thunderbird Tribal Casino.

No patron Saint

but the half-blind abuelo

carefully cramming cages of hens

into the luggage rack

on the midnight flight from

Newark to San Juan.

No Revelation, only the wail

of the newborn citizen

whose mother crossed over

in the hour before dawn,

her final breath a one-word prayer,

“Al Norte.”

I believe in the Last Judgment.

It is an infant’s tear

without circumference.

The sound of a wood thrush

is the end of time, a Parousia

in each dogwood blossom.

I am a fallen creature

plummeting into grace.

From what should I be saved?

I was never lost.

The mountaintop is wherever I am.

I vow to wander.

My Pilgrimage will be a journey

into the backyard.

Angels of dew in a wilderness of moss,

clover cathedrals, the priestess

a ladybug, the starry empyrean

whirling in black loam,

grand epiphanies

for the eremitic visionary earthworm.

Let us dig.

No comments: