Resurrection Sunday

Near Flood, Contoocook River
Peterborough, NH

 

Resurrection Sunday

In his darkness then an epiphany: 

such a love he must not fail.

                                Niall Williams

                                John

 

This particular river bulges with mountain

            water run-off.  It is falling

            with such velocity, it makes great

            mounds of foam that float

            & flail in the crotches of a rock

 

& the sawn-off ithyphallic

branches caught there, watching

the rise of a body gorging on snow

melt twenty miles from here,

pushed in laborious rushes

 

of contractions and rests. And

also west of here, this limb’s

mother, this limb’s sibling

saplings.  Imagine them quiet

in the sober quiet of their grove,

 

reaching up to touch their mother’s

one limbless spot.  Her pruning wound,

renamed to cicatrix. Forgiveness,

in its measure, is callus tissue, in time

the lid of an eye.  Blind by then. Or

 

outwardly sightless should I say.

Inside, beneath the cambium,

a nob of love is forming, late

twin of the limb that by now may be just

the right size at just the right time

 

to be sunk by the mud & crush of others

like it, & beaver pups touch it

like a talisman before their swim

out and against it all.