Like your poems
the high front yard
faces a lake’s inlet.
Purple, pink, orange and yellow
day lilies
punctuate steep
steps to your front door
where lamb’s ear,
allium, ivy and clematis
cover the earth
beneath fig and pear.
Cloistered with fuschia,
fern, spirea and impatiens,
you scan the flowers
talk of saint Romero,
how he died preaching
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
At table we share
livetta bread, peaches, cherries and
a view of clouds
you say is
Mt. Rainier
real as the line we had to
break
at Nevada’s nuclear site
to restructure
the sentence our lives are making.
Now I see your obituary,
your death
covered with words
I wish were
your new poem,
another glimpse of
the unseen:
an energy field
more intense than war.
MURRAY BODO is a Franciscan friar, author, and writer in residence at Thomas More College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Phrases in italics are from Denise Levertov’s poem "Making Peace." The online version does not represent the poet's original layout.
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