Danny Gentile #38 - Holy Day of Obligation

Holy Day of Obligation

Madonna of the lectern
don't come crying
in crocodile salvation
from the transept
of your lizard throat

there is no boon of knowledge
for your skin to weather

there is no tide
for you to rise upon

ungainly leaf on the stream
sluiced on a marble interim
on a scale still living you return
from your candled font
to the stale resolute pillar

where you do not sway
as words swelling over you
more easily become

hands bared in fists
before your storm

*

Madonna of harnessed night
from an underlit atrium
you rise and return
stirring a mythic sun

each irresolute birth
is your anchor stone

each step a devastation
through vespers into evening
and the dry calling song
hung around a throat
of withered loom

your hand stretches to morning
in a rise of gratuity and obligation

from the shadow of antiquity
comes the blaring reasoned day

you echo in uneasy light
the fractured window
defining you until

you die again inside
a statue of yourself.