Sign
July 7, 2008
You can take it as a sign
if you will.
I think you'd take it as a sign if the sun
rose on Tuesday,
the rain fell in Rio,
the sky grew dark at dusk,
or the ibis' call sounded
particularly morose.
You'd draw in your bone-dry fleece,
and decide you misunderstood your question.
You hear the still small voice
promising war amidst the howling
newsboys announcing armistice,
the bluebird whispering happiness over the sirens.
In the comets and lightning,
you see a sign to cast in your lot
with Julius.
A Sign
7 July 2008, 10:02 AM
But it IS a sign.
You don’t have to see
the geese flying southward
in summertime, the star that falls
just so in the empty darkness
of the sky-sea, the aberrant fourth leaf
on an otherwise common clover
right there in the backyard
beneath the sycamore. Where I sit,
even that is a sign.
Hell is overthrown,
the captives are freed, and we
have made our way on anguished,
war-torn feet to Victoria.