The hanging tree
yields its truth
in the cold black of dark;
but only to the bitter seers
in lonely rooms
where bare, black walls
and cracked glass
mirror their crucified souls.
Watching from a stained window,
a seer in a back room
sees a Spring surprise
beneath the silver ice:
a purple-poisoned river
filled with gaping fish.
He sees no life
when the ice cracks.
Guns in the grey distance;
Killing in winter.
Hunting or war, blood
will decide, and violate the white.
Jagged ice cuts deep
into veins of severed soil.
Cold ruptured land
frozen in a dark dream.
There will be no Resurrection
in the Spring.
Black twigs criss-cross
an enervated sky.
Dead boughs are stripped
of meaning
now the leaves
and flocks have flown.
Restore it now;
the last drop of medicine
gives back meaning to a dying world
through the prism of your dying eyes.
The raven flees the scene
of his latest crime,
beats the black air with
dark angels’ wings;
beats the earth to sleep.