Two Poems

Psalm at High Tide

Rain on the river’s vinyl surface:

water that glitters,

water that hardly moves,

its branches witness to trees,

to fronds, leaves, crab floats,

pilings, shopping carts, appliances —

the divine earth takes

everything in its wounded side

and gives back wholeness.

It bears the huddled profane

 and endures the soaking

venerated in its wild swirls —

this river fixed with wooden

weirs, radiant in misshapen glory.

==============================

Poem Found

                      New Orleans, September 2005

…  And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst

of the waters” and into the dome God put

–

the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the oppressed.

God put the unsightly sick and the crying young

–

into the dome and the dry land did not appear.

And God allowed those who favored themselves

–

born in God’s image to take dominion over

the dome and everything that creeped within it

–

and made them to walk to and fro above it

in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms

–

and in their conference halls. And then

God brooded over the dome and its multitudes

–

and God saw God’s own likeness in the shattered

tiles and the sweltering heat and the polluted rain.

–

God saw everything and chose to make it very

good. God held the dome up to the light

–

like an open locket and in every manner called

the others to look inside and those who saw

–

rested on that day and those who didn’t

went to and fro and walked up and down

–

the marsh until the loosened silt gave way

to a void, and darkness covered the faces with deep sleep.

–

“Psalm at High Tide” and “Poem Found” reprinted from The Dirty Side of the Storm by Martha Serpas. Copyright © 2007 by Martha Serpas. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.