Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds
after Dali
Say table, and I’ll say bread. Say cup
and I’ll say wine and spoon. The
communion of saints. Incline
your head to me. The forgiveness of sins.
Love’s summit. Even an ocean
and all its water, its etched waves,
a distant second. The resurrection of the body.
Gather together at the day’s last meal.
Climb to the mount of the disheveled
tablecloth. The life everlasting. Clear
the dishes, sweep the crumbs to the ground
with the side of your hand.
It was a field before it was a battlefield
for Luke
It was a green before a fiddler stood on it,
and made mirth, and never stopped playing.
It was grass. Or maybe a greenwood. Maybe
underbrush, thick at your knees. Unparsable.
We have each taken something that belonged
to itself first, something that was once a wide
and open green. What turns red in spring
before it greens? The redbud trees along
the highway. Also the human heart. Each
glows lamp-like on the road to church.
Virginia rolls with fields and when I say:
it was a field before it was a battlefield,
you say: “And after.” Yes, and after.
