Beneath the Frost

Before dawn
the sky is the colour
of opened flesh,

and over the sleeping roofs
the planes pass

so high
they are only silver wounds

stitched
across scarlet reds.

The old crow
on the telephone wire
turns its head west.

It knows something.

Smoke writes
its thin scripture
over the world.

Not prophecy.

Exhaust.

Not angels.

Men.

Men in helmets,
men behind screens,
men whose hands
never touch the bodies
their decisions enter.

East to west,
west to east…

all night
the iron birds
cross over the earth,

our Grandmother,
who receives
without complaint
the ash,
the oil,
the names of the dead.

In the kitchen light
I sit awake

with coffee gone cold,
watching the dark window
become a mirror.

At my age
the world no longer arrives
as news.

It arrives
as recognition.

Another war.
Another flag.
Another holy name
strapped to a missile.

How easily
the mouth learns
to bless
what the heart
should refuse.

There are men
who speak of God

with blood
still wet
on their sleeves.

There are men
who kneel
for cameras

and rise
to sign the orders.

The churches fill
with thunderous certainty.

And mosques.
And temples.
And chambers
of government.

Everywhere
a creed is lifted
higher than a child.

Everywhere
the message
is left behind
like a coat
forgotten on a chair.

Blessed are the poor,
someone once said.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Yet the stock exchange opens
at nine.

And all morning
the numbers trend upward
like fire up dry grass.

How strange
that instructions
so gentle

could be bent
into a sword.

How strange
that love,

once spoken plainly
on a hillside,

could be reissued
as doctrine,
as campaign slogan,
as marching song.

I think
if that carpenter
returned now,

boots dusty,
hands scarred,
face lined
with desert light,

he would not be welcomed
beneath the polished glass.

Not in the cathedrals.

Not in the capitols.

Not by the men
wearing his name
like body armor.

They would call him
dangerous.

Subversive.

Unpatriotic.

They would ask
whose side he was on,

as if mercy
must choose a border.

As if compassion
requires a passport.

As if heaven
could be partitioned
by pipelines.

And he’d be
gunned down cold.

Outside,
the snowmelt
runs black
through the gutter.

Even here
the season is wrong.

The winters
come thin now.

The summers
linger like fever.

The sea is rising
in the mind
before it rises
at the shore.

A friend
on the Pacific
leans over instruments

and watches
the numbers
inch upward

like a pulse
that will not slow.

Two degrees.

A number so small
it can sit
on the head of a pin.

A number so large
it can empty nations.

A river dries.

A field fails.

A father
with no bread
for his children

becomes
more frightening
than any army.

Because hunger
has no ideology.

Because despair
is older
than every empire.

And still
the billionaires
build higher walls,

deeper bunkers,
longer tables.

They stack wealth
like sandbags
against a flood
that does not bargain.

As if gold
can be eaten.

As if shares
can be planted.

As if money
will mean anything
to the wind.

A wife
saw this long ago.

Not the dates.
Not the graphs.

The shape of it.

A world
tilted out of balance.

Take more
than you need,

she said,

and the taking
will not stop
with you.

It enters the soil.

It enters the blood.

It enters the mind

until greed itself
begins to sound
like reason.

And what is religion
in such a time?

I cannot call it evil.

I have seen
too much bread broken
in its name.

Too many hands
washing wounds.

Too many women
in plain clothes
feeding strangers.

A daughter
in a kitchen
in Kraków,

ladling soup
into bowls,

never asking
who believed what,

never asking
who voted how,

never asking
who deserved it.

Only hunger.

Only need.

Only love
made practical.

That too
is religion.

Not the banners.

Not the chants.

Not the men
who invoke heaven
before war.

But the bowl.

The loaf.

The hand
reaching outward.

So then
what fails?

The faith?

Or us?

Can any good thing
pass through human hands
without taking on
our fingerprints…

our fear,
our vanity,
our lust for power?

Can even light
be made into shadow
once it passes
through stained glass?

I do not know.

That is the question
the dawn keeps asking.

The sky pales.

The first birds begin.

Somewhere
children are waking.

Somewhere
a market opens.

Somewhere
a missile is fueled.

Somewhere
a prayer is whispered
for peace

by the same lips
that will later
cheer for war.

And still
our earth turns,

wounded,
beautiful,
bearing us.

Perhaps
nothing we touch
remains pure.

Perhaps
that is our tragedy.

Or perhaps
the purity
was never in the thing…

not in religion,
not in nation,
not in philosophy…

but in the moment
one human being
chooses

not to corrupt it.

A loaf shared.

A weapon lowered.

A lie refused.

A child taught
to love the earth.

The Sacred Hoop
broken,

yes…

but somewhere
beneath the snow
the roots remain.

I think of my grandchildren.

Seventh Generation arrived.

Small hands
reaching toward spring-time.

And I wonder

whether the Tree
might flower again

not because we were wise,

but because they might be.