Civilized Sacrifice

I have climbed the backs of gods too. It’s not so

strange, dressed in heavy coat and boots, hat

pulled down to the eyebrows, cheeks windburnt,

gloved fingers numb, and each brief breath prayed

upon, each step thrown onto the loose altar of stone.

Blinded by spires of light, I’ve looked away

as the unblemished blue splintered in all directions.

And I’ve backed away from the sheer

precipice, the infinite suddenly a fearful measure,

the way down to tundra and the jagged maze of

granite, leaving only a crevice in which to cower.

I’ve lain on the steep slopes of night under spruce,

wrapped against rain and cold, and watched clouds

explode in my face. Stark boughs reached

then sagged back in a sweeping, resolute silence.

I was shaken loose by thunder and lightning,

like the small girl, named Juanita by strangers.

She tumbled a hundred yards down

Nevado Ampato peak, her whereabouts unquestioned

for five hundred years until a nearby volcano

began a festering eruption, thawing the slope,

and wrapped in her illiclia shawl woven in the ancient

Cuzco tradition, wearing a toucan- and parrot-feathered

headdress, her frozen fetal posture a last effort

at warmth above tree line amid ice fields, there

to address and redress for rain and maize, for

full vats of fermenting beer, plentiful llama herds,

for the civilized sacrifice, to be buried alive and wait

in private, as we all do to speak with our gods, hoping

to appease, to know, to secure the illusive cosmic

machinery, and in that last numb moment her left

hand gripped her dress for the intervening centuries.

Minor Gods

Another roadside bomb, another suicide

bomber, another dozen blind-folded, hands-tied-

behind-the-back bodies found half buried at the town dump„Ÿ

it’s how a Saturday explodes until I turn off

the radio and look out the east window at a tabby

crouched in explosive morning light and acting strangely. 

I hurry outside to rescue an eight-inch long, pencil-thin,

ring-neck snake before it is playfully eviscerated.

A hundred yards into the woods, the palm heat

of cupped hands has pacified its coiled panic

and I scold it to be more careful before it calmly

slithers into a brush pile and into another ambush.

Balanced between two flood lights on the west wall,

phoebes again build a nest out of moss and spittle,

and I build a four-feet high fence on the ground below them.

They quickly abandon their efforts as if not understanding

what I’m trying to keep out and keep in. Occasionally,

I see their bobbing drab-gray tails on a nearby branch.

I leave the fence standing.  I blame the cats

without evidence of guilt.  Weeks later,

the phoebes return, the same pair or different,

I don’t know after so many seasons of failed attempts

on every wall of the house, including the black snake

that scaled ten feet of siding to eat the hatchlings.

From the kitchen window, I watch them fly back

and forth through the gauntlet of clawed hunger,

too early to know ends except this flying. 

Either the gods are omnipotent and not good,

according to Epicurus, just look at this world, or they are

good and not omnipotent, look at these phoebes.