These are pastures


A Chapbook / A Daisychain / Sheaves of Chaff / Back-lit Graffiti


 Contents   

Wilderness Time

This isn’t happy-fun time; this is wilderness time

When the preacher said it like some direct-message
revelation to me
it must have been early 2017
or near enough

His Swiss-French accent
was a demand for peace
and order

His nephew died in a train crash days earlier
And his words were respiration
in and out
compulsory

This morning I told my sister
Every cactus loves its desert
While I thought about the preacher’s only son
Why he felt called to serve a church
in suburban Massachusetts
Why we don’t always bloom where we’re planted
or not at all
How a snowsquall can wreak havoc down South
easier than a nor’easter does Downeast

Wonder what it’s like to be a happy cactus
who’s never seen a wet blanket of spring snow—
flakes arriving as numinous
innumerable UFOs
—or pastures, so how could a cactus know
its lot, even as where it stands has got others screaming
Greener!
the desert-dweller tells us
These are pastures

Wilderness Time

This isn’t happy-fun time; this is wilderness time

When the preacher said it like some direct-message
revelation to me
it must have been early 2017
or near enough

His Swiss-French accent
was a demand for peace
and order

His nephew died in a train crash days earlier
And his words were respiration
in and out
compulsory

This morning I told my sister
Every cactus loves its desert
While I thought about the preacher’s only son
Why he felt called to serve a church
in suburban Massachusetts
Why we don’t always bloom where we’re planted
or not at all
How a snowsquall can wreak havoc down South
easier than a nor’easter does Downeast

Wonder what it’s like to be a happy cactus
who’s never seen a wet blanket of spring snow—
flakes arriving as numinous
innumerable UFOs
—or pastures, so how could a cactus know
its lot, even as where it stands has got others screaming
Greener!
the desert-dweller tells us
These are pastures