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| Winter, with Child, Red Wing, MN: Red Dragonfly Press, 2015. |
Windows on the Past
I must have written these lines on
a gray autumn day,
knowing the way
darkness falls, as the expression goes,
like a shade drawn across the
window too early
one day, and
earlier the next, steadily dimming
the illumined clouds that released
angels in summer,
whose wingspans
grew too wide and whose spirits
became the fog gathering in the
churchyard I saw
through the
window. I’d stand against the wall
just to keep standing, feeling
worse than melancholy.
I wrote, “a sugar
maple is inflamed with its own color,
with expansive yellow passion”
—the desire
of a younger
woman in a sad marriage
I’d rather not remember. When
music on the radio
was beautiful, I thought,
“none of this is new,”
not even a flute painting in my mind’s
eye:
Chagall’s swooping
brushstroke encircling the lovers
in a protected, unbroken globe, a
huge green bird
perched above, or
Matisse’s dancers, hands clasped,
circling fast, each one reaching
for the other, leaning
into the momentum
of their shared joy,
or the tender hands of mother and
child portrayed
so often. “None
of this new,” nor is the prayer,
“let none of these be harmed.” If
only such human-
made marvels
could save us, be our mirrors,
the promise of the saints, as the
holy icons are
our windows
opening to heaven and a new earth.
I count the years to recall—that
was which war
or which eve of
war? “If the air is still and a leaf drops
through an unmoving tree, it’s
because it’s tired and it’s time.”
What a bleak
parable, I must have penned numb, too weary
to “lay aside every weight,” as
St. Paul tells his fellow Jews,
and “run with
patience the race that is set before us.”
Why is the question, “when will I
find peace?”
fixed on the
self, not on beyond? I hold my head,
heavy as the world in my hands,
and mutter words, futile,
I suppose,
against the murderous judgments of leaders
who have their own words based on
scripture,
and who swear—so
help me, God—just as I do,
and hope to join our voices with
“so great
a cloud of witnesses”
as encompasses us all.
--Aliki Barnstone, from Winter, with Child
http://reddragonflypress.org/books.html#!/WINTER-WITH-CHILD-by-Aliki-Barnstone/p/48144070/category=12175283
