ABOVE THE FRAY II

HERE

...and us, air, in the morning
                     - Salvatore Quasimodo

Let me live in your sanctuary
                     - Psalm 61:4


   I.

We come as our own visitor

To the sanctuary

Leaves that fall

Gird the season red

Doves fly by

Past black and clawing branches

Past burnt out woods and hills

Our arrival is a song

Of a forgotten priest

Piercing the silence

Of this sanctuary

Or mounds of earth rising

The pulse of yearning rapping

Along the furrowed desolation

Of a devastated landscape

   II.

In this long-awaited high savannah

The slumbering moura is stirring

The kwamra's dreams are waking

And leaves that were written dead

Are waking deeper than the roots

That penned them. Each cotyledon

Each tentative bud, saves the day.

The earth stands still, mauve-

Colored and olive, a chalice

Before the morning sun.

   III.

The earth is the ultimate

In our song of the womb:

The final grace that is mother.

Tall. Graceful. Elegant.

She embraces and shields us

Shows us the wounds at the side

At the feet and hands, where

The world has died. We sing praises

For her great strength, for the bread

She breaks; and the living spring

We drink from the cup of her hands.

From KWAMRA: a season of harvest