Selected Poems

Resurrection

When life is over, if we are called
to some miraculous afterlife in which our bodies
are lean and adept as trout
slipstreaming the cosmos, 
hovering like rainbows 
above the burnished stones of heaven,
that would be a life worth coming back to. 
But if I am still me
would that be resurrection? Shouldn’t I be
something simpler and better in the next life, a redbird
flashing through the tall columned temple of the forest
or a salamander, naked and refined in its cool solitude
under the mossy rocks, 
or maybe a tiny purple and green beetle 
braving the world in its fragile armor? 
If I am resurrected into this human body 
still separate from all that is not me  
what have I learned?

No, when life is over
let me be broken and crucified, consumed
so that I may arise on Easter morning
dancing in the lilies, kissing the black 
humming bellies of bees
golden with pollen. Let the winds scatter my dust
and engender life in fallow fields
not my own. Let the rains dissolve me
and quench my thirst, let my resurrection 
come slow and unannounced, without 
angels and trumpets, let it come 
in the darkness where mind and body learn 
the humility of decomposition, 
let it embrace me as gently as a lover 
who makes me forget I ever was.

(published in Pegasus)