Being Low, My God, Hawks Rise
(Inspired by Elizabeth Madox Roberts’s A Buried Treasure)
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”
--Luke 12:34
She longs to set her heart against the earth, hear-
ing, whole, where God still speaks from seeds of wheat, gold
in its origins.
There will your heart be also, on vast oceans,
In your forty-days of rain, which gives forth rem-
nants of Holy Sonnets,
Echoes of the world in its becoming– pat-
terning themselves there upon your heart, buried under deltas
of blood beating Time.
There will your heart be also when the crow brings death
to grain and the Western Wind beats drought upon the land;
Being low, My God, Hawks
Rise as lightning from the ash. Hymns of blest
Springs bury October Rain in songs that tremble–
Dawn being a shadow
Of blood and the trumpet of sins last remission.
And there will your heart be also when the earth
gives up its ghost, dying,
At last, with death’s dominion.
Mystery unfolding in mystery
To eyes for all of Time.
1 comment:
Hi Brad - I really liked this poem. I found myself wanting to go back and read it again. and again. At first, I thought I was going to not like the form of the lines -- but when I read it silently, instead of aloud as I usually read poetry, I found the line form works for silently reading. So good move. Beyond the thing with form, my impression of feeling and loving her was very strong. Am I right about that? I find the image of the hawk odd, but I have to go back and read BT - it has been years and I can't remember the hawk in it. I like your poem v much.
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