Last Judgement*
after Rilke
In Togas, in rags, in gowns of falling flesh, disorderly
they kneel, they supplicate, they squat. Gathered in Plazas,
on playgrounds, on the commons, not to be distracted
from their prayer, which they have found themselves
like a lake of loons and pines, inside of.
Then angels come, begin their renovation,
magnetic plasma honing throats to speak belief–
dispatching the actual gods of themselves toward wish,
toward trust–those reliquaries deep in the solar plexus,
dousing the fiery fields where fear is eaten whole by risk.
And the only judgment comes when fear looks back
on the world it made, appalled–as wild rose rise
from the parking lots. As if to say We Grow–
That’s what we do. We’ve been here all along.
* first appeared in Orion Magazine
and then in my chapbook “Inside Light”
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