Sunday
by Shane Carreon
Forsythia blooms yellow by my porch
this Easter morning and you come to my place
with a red cooler and a checked tablecloth.
The world is clear blue with pigeons
and squirrels and you tell me
you’ve just come from mass.
A special day with better singing than usual
and praise songs spring in my mind
the exact shade of joy
as when I was ten and still in a choir.
You drive our way to the lake up north;
looking through sky and hills and listening
to your voice, I open the window and let in
the wind, let it take away
the sight of bird bones
on the street on my way to the dollar store
two days ago, and the memory of a woman
stopping me to ask what are you?
In the torn country I once lived,
your god dies a number of days every year;
radios replay his seven last words
and his faithful wait, meek,
for a day like this. You, with your blue eyes,
on top of the world, saying how you will fish.
I imagine
unrolling a prayer mat
on the grass under the open sky.
Not far away the water waits for us,
glittering with sun.