Turning Things Around

This myopic view of plodding endlessly
toward nowhere and brandishing dull and rusting blades

is exactly like a thresher walking an already cut field,
exhausting even on days of victory and adequate harvest.

We who keep walking are all deeply tired
and wish the web of the world was not so tangled and torn.

We imagine putting one foot in front of the others
and applying equal pressure to the skull and to the heart.

Here we must watch carefully
as the vanquished masses
take flight into the wide open spaces
with small wounds bleeding
into the overworked soil
until the plow is found
to turn things around.

Floundering

Some days I flounder for virtue,
my ego promenading past the faults of others,
my head held higher than it usually does.

On days when pride will not vanish
and I quake with anger
at some blemished mark on the face of injustice,

shave the heat of embarrassment from my cheeks
so that I won't let tears fall
or need to malinger over nothing.

Let the tangled mutation of the soul of another
heal me with kindness.

Let me not sink into the darkness
where all who suffer
lose their way
over and over again.

Mercy looks like my sister
when I can trace that profile
with my blistered fingers
at the closing of all time.

The Pageant

The round faces of all the children
have turned their attention again to the squirming, swaddled child
marking the travels they have made
through the lines of the pageant they know so well.

Each cheek is smudged with a bit of frosting or chocolate
from the plundered goodies gathered as offerings
too near the stage.

The littlest angels are free - range in this production,
howling like the coxswain in a lifeboat set adrift,
and the olders expunge small hurts and fear with cooing voices
like salve they have learned from their mothers.

We witnesses are silently healed
in the retelling of the ancient story.

The star shines dimly above halos and gossamer wings.
Behold!

The magic drifts in on the wisps of incense
and floats on the sounds of voices
lifted on the notes shaped onto the trestle
of all our modest prayers.