The Seventh Day

The Seventh Day

A poem from A Month of Sundays.

They seemed insignificant in that busy week
When dreams were sent spinning in the vivid air:
To creation’s commotion, what dead could compare?
       No hour lingered to hear them speak
       The invocation of time’s elegy.

Second sight of first things, death hovered, a mirage,
In the wilderness distancing earth from heaven.
While the Lord proclaimed birthdays from one to seven
       The dead, in ghostly camouflage,
       Scudded like clouds across the new sky.

They shadowed creation until the seventh day
When their remains demanded to be set at rest.
Then the magic of making, at the rain’s behest,
       Stopped a moment, out of life’s way,
       To endow oases of memory.

In pools of reflection the dead came together
Recollecting on water the world’s mortal features,
The face a wind startled on the first day of weather
       Summoning the courage of creatures
       To haunt the dim future none could foresee.

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