After Another Interminable Long Dark Night of the Soul,
A Few Weary Saints Debate the Merits of Unionization

Peter Munro

Upright as hackles on a dog's ruff raised
for battle, flags whacked sudden as a gust
of God, we sailed aloft our little praise,
hailing like songbirds who utter dawn's rust,

like an ovum skulked from a cat to dust
feathers up all cloud and flutter. What bright
tiger burns? And who exalts that God thrust
wind through bone-spans and lungs hung limp with light?

Urine, feces, lactose, and lymph, the slight
reek of God loosed by ducts, sluiced through sphincters,
sperm in gusts that songbirds and lungs delight
their Seeker, bile and gall the tincture

anointing our wind. We kept the stricture
slandered against us and soared up on God's
tongues, blown wild, our wings flung wide as Scripture.
But would the yearned-for walk where wings have trod

who yammer halos and hard-hats, hackled
for war and the wages of our heckles?

The 2River View, 2_3 (Spring 1998)