Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #11, September, 1999 : -- -1 -2 -3 -4 - 5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12
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Rebecca Seiferle
The Sacrifice Tree

                 

God, the Gardener

The paradiso of the bees and the hummingbirds
              withered to pods, pendulous, rattling
                 on the stems. As the translucent
                     husks dried, the seeds
                           became more prominent,
                                 visible even from a distance, gravid
                                      souls swelling in the sheath until
                                           they fell.

Like the beeweed, we will lose
              everything but the
                   framework, our skeletal
                      purgatory radiant with ice,
                         glittering on the frozen
                            sword of the angel of exile, rising
                               again and again
                                  out of the melting weight
                                     of the snows.

By the time spring comes, if spring
              ever comes, the human heart will have been
                   crushed so many times
                        rising out of the weight of the falling
                           then melting snows, or
                              torn back and forth
                                 by such violent feelings
                                      that All that connects
                                         What is above the ground

to Whatever is below
           will have worked free of the earth.
                the knob that connects
                      the trunk of heaven
                          to the roots below
                                 will be
                                      exposed,
                                           like the wrist joint
                                                  of a human hand
                                                           gripping, letting go.



Copyright © 1999 Rebecca Seiferle.

About the poet.

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Issue #11, September, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.