EPISTEMOLOGY

They never should have shown me
those pictures: the man who
wore a long white robe, sandals,
his moist brown eyes always looking up,
his long silk hair surrounded by a mist of gold.

They told me it was he who changed the world.
He spoke wise words but never wrote them down.
With time I learned he was the one
who saved me. From what, I did not know.
He had to be killed in order to do it.

After that, no robe, no sandals.
Nearly naked, limp hair matted,
head hung low, he was nailed
to a hideous wooden cross. I was
too young to not look, to not listen.

I put the pictures, the story, the cross
away in a deep place where
things never let go. Even though
all of it happened when I wasn’t there.
Nor was anyone who told me so.

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EPISTEMOLOGY
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Originally posted October 2013

TO A TULIP

You,
yellow flower
standing in a cobalt vase,
unfurling blades,
stemmed sacramental cup–
winter was hard
but now your simple grace
is green announcement:
things are looking up.
There by the window you
to sunlight are the antiphon,
beauty new as beauties past,
spring’s insistence
life should carry on.
Yet you become
most beautiful at last,
when age and death are
what you must fulfill:
come that night
you can no longer
close against the dark,
you open wide until
you are all heart,
and every petal knows
translucence as it falls.
You could be hinting
how to do it, for us all.

“LAST HURRAH”        ©Sheila Creighton, 2014

Photo courtesy of Sheila Creighton  Imageryoflight@wordpress.com

RETURN TO A LANDSCAPE

This morning north
and east of what
was once my home,
the dusky mountains
trace their frozen
undulations mystified
against a salmon sky.
In the middle distance
cozy little houses
tuck themselves among
deep mounds of snow,
exhaling from their
brick red chimneys
all I know
of them or theirs.
Nearby the pointed firs
point up, to pointlessness
through january air.

Nowhere is home.
So home is everywhere.

EPISTEMOLOGY

They never should have shown me
those pictures:  the man who
wore a long white robe, sandals,
his moist brown eyes always looking up,
his long silk hair surrounded by a mist of gold.

They told me it was he who changed the world.
He spoke wise words but never wrote them down.
With time I learned he was the one
who saved me.  From what, I did not know.
He had to be killed in order to do it.

After that, no robe, no sandals.
Nearly naked, limp hair matted,
head hung low, he was nailed
to a hideous wooden cross.  I was
too young to not look, to not listen.

I put the pictures, the story, the cross
away in a deep place where
things never let go.  Even though
all of it happened when I wasn’t there.
Nor was anyone who told me so.