What Rises?
Over us hangs the savior sans serif,
no longer watching us, all broken curve and slump
into what flesh was, into what flesh could be,
the soul's encumbrance but not its devisor.
When light enters, darkness solidifies,
moves up out of the margins. That old stain
lifts from the cloth to run, lurid again
in the gutters, the great tergiversator.
Terror's imp and impulse fortifies
the weak against all council or compromise,
plies damage, but knows no collateral,
and keeps uneasy company with ghosts.
The ancient malevolence prompts the dogs to run wild,
jabs a knee in the back that forfeits a man his life,
prods a leader to deny people their livelihood,
and re-labels chaos as just our neighborhood.
The ignorant armies are not those bearing swords
but those wielding words to dissemble, trip, and steal
meaning and kindness from language itself, and boast
messiah-like of their power to crush and to rule.
Grief watches at the tomb for an undefiled
light to emerge, a squaring to come later,
a risen body of real and common good.
© 2024 Jennifer M Phillips
A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (i-blurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). Two of Phillips' poems are nominated for this year's Pushcart Prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment