If It's Possible

 

 

If It’s Possible

For One Stem to Kneel

 

 A rumble went among us, glancingly,

like a flame flickering limb to limb in a stand

too wet to catch.

                            Christian Wiman

                            In the Time of Fire

 

The rain has made the Queen

Anne’s lace to brace to her

one knee.  Her ruff is

suffered to the riverbanks & to

the pavement.  In the night

 

I heard bucket

of rain & I imagined a life

boat taking on water & the clogged

bilge & the boys sluicing it all over

the gunwales.  Probably this

water & all her attending

 

molecules have shoulder-rubbed

the pomp of the near drowned, down

the inner hulls, into the buckets,

charged with the rescued breath

spit into the wind.  Wont’ it go

 

back up int the sky & be lugged

over the small mountains?

Won’t it have changed some given

their rough revivals?  Imagine

ministering to them, imagine

 

the slim distance between God’s

baptizer’s hand on the back

of the head and the clasped grip

of the penitent, plunging them

under to the count no one has ever

 

agreed on but for the waiting

of some sign in the raining

sky, in the crowd of flowers ecstatic

on the bank, their grip of ligaments

closing over the sopped wing

 

of the bee giving up, giving into

the struggle.