AUGURIES
The crow caws on the roof’s west horn
of the Maranatha Free Will Baptist church,
feeds the prophet a late breakfast.
Geese fly in a westward V.
Green-gilled mushrooms track fairy dances on the lawn.
On the creek bank of a Sunday
the Baptists were in full cry.
The gassy governor of chaos looks down red-eyed.
The hunter rises, calls his white dog, perhaps once red:
the master comes,
the bleeding woman clings to his skirt,
his power flows.
The Moon scuds in her last quarter
washed of the red eclipse, of the ninth day’s shame.
7 AM, August 22nd 1989 / 21 Av 5749, Ardmore, Oklahoma
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Author:
Robert Southwick Richmond (
Offline) - Published: December 30th, 2020 21:24
- Comment from author about the poem: A poem, one of several Ive written, about whats to be seen in the sky on a night. Augury once meant divination by watching the flight of birds. Maranátha means the master comes in Aramaic. The prophet is Elijah, who was fed by crows in the wilderness (1 Kings 17:6). The mushroom is Chlorophyllum molybdites, the only green mushroom, poisonous. The line about Baptists is a misuse of a line in the Advent hymn that begins On Jordan\\\'s bank [John the] Baptists cry / announces that the Lord is nigh. The governor is Jupiter. The hunter is Orion, calling Sirius (which an urban legend says was once red). The bleeding woman refers to Jesus healing the woman with the hemorrhage (Mark 5:25-34). A week earlier in 1989 a total eclipse of the Moon coincided with Tisha bAv, the fast of the ninth day of the month of Av, that commemorates the destructions of the Temple.
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