The Blooding

 

Scarlet berries by the hundred break

quietly, violently, the green-black leaves—

like drops of Blood, our fathers used to say—

and late sun floods and reddens snow.

The world’s never got over the darkening

of your death—all nature dimmed and kneeled

at the slowing of your blood; earth plates

dislocated at the wrenching of your breath.

Birds hushed. But even now, your Cross

is everywhere: at the tops of wooden poles,

in the fall of bindweed in long grasses.

Each moment is inscribed with you—

unspeakable loss, desire. In prayer

I fall further into you: your gaze cave-deep,

a plummeting mine. Your love gallops

through the earth, through me—even now

it won’t turn back—; it lives again, it protects.

And like a child on his first hunt whose cheek

is brushed with the slaughtered fox’s tail,

all of creation has been blooded.

​

from "Dawn of this Hunger", 2021