You had your breath of Mary, your dance with Caesar and the kiss
As La Demoiselle bent her long neck and padded down the paneled hall
As an officer might on his wedding night.
As a bride might worry when he hasn’t come home.

We spent all of our money on each other,
Brash as planting crops, harvesting wind, damming rivers, planting trees.
“There are no easy answers” she says like the news might,
Like the inmost heart unlocks its shame to breathe awhile – respire.

When you catch your breath, come down here to the front of the stage.
The people have paid to hear the soliloquy.
The orchestra is in the pit, tuned and taut.
Come humble singer with the well-worn words, the windlass and stars,
The beaker, time piece and thinker,
The climax takes a twist with confessions, infidelities,
Souls torn and shaped as they come into the world,
Full of blue like the sky who winked years away
To bring us to table, to place, to ourselves
With her unheard and nervous call,
As if the sky needed the beggar with his bowl
And the temperate night looking out on the water lapping.
The scene of séance to raise the dead
With Mary’s lip and Caesar’s chalice of poison,
All in blue, in grief, in azure of sunset, in yellow of harvest,
In dark, closing our lids, rubbing our eyes for such long days of continuance
Hunting the phantom connections that might unite our nation and the world.

The blistered and pocked leper of self
Let up from my desk or cubicle to address you and
The carbuncle on your hull, the splinters on your mast,
The blood on your stockade, the woven rope, the chain of anchor,
To address you such as motley crew and audience.
No therapy, no blood,

Pallid in the mid-day heat.
Seek shelter, seek each other
As the way of the young and the stranger
Is full of vigor and fresh eyes.
Full of tomorrow and her herd
Gently lolling
Where the long grass meets the stream.

By Rolf Stavig
7-4-2021