The World Swings Open

The World Swings Open

(“Jesus prayed, ‘Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.’” Luke 23:34 [The Message])

Awash with mercy, the world swings open, the
oceans laugh, the air is wider than long.
But the oceans moan sometimes
at the eyes that will not see. The breath is
too narrow
to glide on the afternoon air. The
same
spirit
that chained the novelist to
a forsaken desk between miscreants,
still insists the ending is reserved for
an elite few.
Who knew
that love would ever be defined by
those who never taste the new vintage
that spilled from a body so maligned?

That day. This afternoon. A century from now
when the moon is overhead. One second before
the big bang. Five minutes after the baby cried.
Thirty-five years since my mother died. The
thru-line
runs from pierced hands and feet
to my backyard,
to the desert heat,
weaving castles, incomplete confessions and
the mercy seat.

Oh Wounded Love, oh Child of divine habitations,
oh Human gunned down in the ghetto, shut down by
 emboldened halos,
oh Glory that fills more than all existence,

We rethink our mass differentials and
line up, tiny as we are, to light up
the old executioner’s road with

Tales of mercy that refuses to die.