:::this is the way the world ends:::

Jesus Week

The baby is at thirty-three weeks! 

ODE

 

Snow making morning of the darkness, that involuntary light.

Can’t you make today a praise of something more than worry,

More than indecision, more than just the sun showing up late

Again at the edges of the fallen snow, gray and purple, then finally

The sky follows blue and pink like an anxious pregnancy?

This poem may be all you will ever have control of, and even

It is a series of decisions you barely recognize as yours

Until you revise them. Look again. The sun pulses from inside

The ice. Look again. The evergreen stoops with the weight

Of the pulsing sun. Look again. Your life is without consequence.

Look again. Your life was once without consequence, and now

There are consequences. Praise them. The rushing aquatic

Beat they played for you out of a little box is beating inside

Your sleeping wife. That sound is not the rhythm wearing

Down a worry stone. Listen: it is the blood of your everlasting

Taking the shape of its vessel. The decisions you have made

And make now will outlast you. You are more alive in

The consequences you impart to your child than you are

Anywhere else. A poem is just practice.   

 

2 Comments

  1. Ned

    This is very exciting, and good to see how the experience turns into poetry. Thanks for sharing this.

  2. J.E.

    Indeed, thank you. Love the concluding line.

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