Stations Along the Way
by Richard Jackson
I hear and behold God in every object.
-Whitman, 1855 “Song of Myself”
In the shadow of the cross, hope-- not certainty
And certainly not fear.
-John Meacham, The Hope of Glory
And as they led him away... There followed Him
A great company of people....
-Luke 23:26-27 (KJV)
1. JUDGING
The wind begins to whisper
behind its stilled mask.
Stars in the river begin to leave a wake.
The Palestinian boy playing in rubble
has been inexplicitly lost in these lines.
We never condemn the shadows we harbor.
The moon alone sits in judgement.
Everywhere the distant shutting of doors.
2. CARRYING
Sometimes the soul carries a lost voice.
The crow is carried by a broken branch
Or else he holds it up.
The roots of our burdens arch
from the ground like gnarled spines.
Sometimes every step is
a step on our own souls.
Sometimes our lives are distorted with burls.
3. FALLING
Like meteors smaller than a grain of sand.
As the bottom of the waterfall
makes every effort
to rise again in mist that itself falls,
sifting slowly downstream. Blue herons coast
across the surface diving now as a storm
approaches. Darkness falls, as they say,
but lightning rises from the earth.
4. MEETING
The rabbit understands the coyote’s needs
all too well. Shadows stay safe in their flatness.
The mannequin’s desire not to be seen
that way. Every meeting:
the heart’s wish to hide its wounds.
Words -- poor camouflage
for what’s in plain sight.
Between every being and itself, an infinite space.
5. HELPING
A plover picking the teeth of a crocodile.
Roots of plants listening to their neighbors.
Chemicals from a marigold keeping
beetles away from tomatoes.
But who is going to help the homeless woman
pushing the shopping cart of all she owns.
Anyone whose name means listener.
It was stardust, yes.
6. IMAGING
There on the far sand was water. No,
heat rising from the desert floor.
Worlds clogged with dreams.
There are veils in the mind we never see
behind. Lift the face to see the veil,
wrote Paul Celan.. Among the age’s
smoldering syllables
our words blister before we say them.
7. FALLING (2)
We called them helicopters,
the maple seeds we tossed
each year to spin back down.
Or the single owl’s feather on our path.
And rock slides scarring the side of our hill.
Gravity. Everything falls.Unlike the eagle who dropped straight down
then rose with a snake in its talons.
8. ENCOURAGING
A constellation of birds follows the trawler home.
A flock of angels, someone offers.
My butterfly bush invites so many
it is hard to tell insects from flowers.
It is the attraction that matters,
an act of faith.
One child called the stars tears
from God, opening her soul’s wings.
9. FALLING (3)
We know the closest black hole we call
“Unicorn” by, like us, a few
half hidden gestures.
Someone flinches as if, but no.
Each look becomes another endless path.
Ridgelines melting in the glare.
Every step has its own idea of torture.
The journey out is always a journey in.
10. STRIPPING
There are certain trees the deer will strip
the bark from. We watch them
through the fog that slowly slips away.
We don’t notice, at first, the worn man
emerging from the far woods,
his shredded clothes waving like
Tibetan prayer flags.
So why didn’t we offer him a coat?
11. NAILING
Not even the lightning splitting the tree,
not the armor piercing shell,
not the terrifying split of the atom.
But the bullet shot through a bedroom wall
that punctures the child’s skull.
The proverbial snake that strikes anywhere.
A few arrows of lightning
pierce through the clouds then pull back.
12. DYING
There’s a clock that stands above the abandoned
factory still reading the hour whose
meaning is long forgotten..
The pocket that hangs below the greenish cloud
signals tornado. It means nothing
to the bats clustered under the cave’s ceiling
harboring the next virus. Believe me,
there’s no cure for forgetting.
13. DESCENDING
Just to watch the wind carry an albatross
further than you can see,
the owl glide through the trees,
the nuthatch inch down a tree bark.
Here the cloud of rain slides gently
down the side of the mountain.
A twig hesitates at the edge
before gliding over the falls.
14. BURROWING
What was it that just escaped into its burrow?.
Like the bear, the homeless man
dumpster diving. It’s a bad analogy
I cast off as careless as litter.
Maybe everyone is hiding inside
their own caves waiting for some word.
Don’t we listen faithfully to radio
waves we never see?
Richard Jackson is the author of nineteen books of poetry including The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems, and the forthcoming Footprints, as well as four chapbooks, and twelve books of prose. Winner of Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA, NEH Fellowships, and the Slovene order of Freedom for his literary and humanitarian work during the Yugoslav wars, he’s edited thirty chapbooks from eastern European poets. His poems have appeared in eighteen languages.
