BOSTON FAITH
Rodney J. Hugen
Why does gray always shade to black?
Why is the spiral always down?
Why do drips forever fall into floods?
Why is the event, the trigger, the perfect moment
always just an instant late? Too late.
"Don't ask why, " the poet pens
as his amber autumn dies slowly into snow
and the glorious fires of New England hills
become the arctic stick arms of winter.
It is barren in the black and white
where passion hides its truer colors
in the cold star night of the frosted earth.
There we speak of all the things that might have been.
Damning words those and damning still.
Then somewhere beneath the frozen earth, a train
tunnels toward the station and from the callous caverns
comes another voice, a softer voice, a whispered voice
rumbling up through the spiral,
up through the black,
up through the flood.
In preparation, I race up the maze, whiten the gray,
and buy new rubber washers for the faucet
only to discover, to my eternal surprise
that I die in the explosion.
Some, caught in the methodical clack of the T,
get off at Government Center,
and take on the green cast of life.
They choose neither to live or die,
but only exist in the in between.
Tightly packed, they hold the bar,
and stare straight ahead. Alone together.
But I prefer the harder death of faith,
because sometimes all you have is color. |
