If I Could Only
I dream of roses blooming in the sky,
of boys with guns, of body parts slung
over broken toys in some unholy rite.
And through mind-searing noise, I hear
the wail of mothers keening for their young.
I dream of hell.
But when dawn breaks,
I wake to find that, silently,
a veil of snow has fallen in the night.
No severed limbs,
no sightless, disembodied faces.
Just snow.
Its cooling calm fills all the small, slight
spaces where, yesterday, deep shadows
seized the waning light.
No bombs. No blood.
Here every twig is dressed in vestal white;
and even while the cold-eyed, brooding
dawn still dawdles into day, the sky is bright
with snow, caught by its primal purity –
the indrawn hush.
This lustrous, arcane alchemy:
the mint-ness of a clean-wiped slate.
It seems a consecration, soft as
the laying on of hands. It bears the grace
of prayer – an urgent dream for respite
everywhere.
If I could only catch it up, reach out
and gather in this white of new-washed
sheets, flung over fields and trees;
garner it in, then loose it on the scorching,
hope-burned world. Stifle the fires and guns,
the screaming drones. Re-write the
countless stolen, rubbled lives.
If I could only soothe this quenching
silence over all the weeping and the
wounds; make real this gift of new
beginning. Of absolution.
This unflawed state of grace.
If I could only.
Feature Image: Francesco Goya, Y son fieras (And they are fierce or And they fight like wild beasts), c. 1810.