Fading Twilight
Now: the fading twilight of the midwestern winter I am gazing at your perfect limbs And washing off the filth of two days on a Greyhound As the frozen piping gurgles up its hymns Soon I'm getting high with your roommates while you read about theology I'm thrashing on your couch all anointed You get back from your final and find me in a K-hole You aren't mad, just disappointed with my choice The voices make it hard to cope but I swear to God I won't stop hopin' Like Christ and Mary Magdalene we'll get together in the end When you've given up sainthood and the worst of my sins are Like the fading twilight of the midwestern winter Now: the dying shadows of the northeastern summer I am waiting outside for my ride Scrapping for copper in vacant neighborhoods And dreaming of the words you will write In the pages of Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly About how war is the mirror of the self The guys in my crew, I tell'em that I knew you But not that I won't ever love anyone else Do you ever think of me as your jeep drives south from Turkey across the border? I hope Kurdish militias take care of their foreign reporters I pray the sunburned scars of whatever evil has been done there Dim like dying shadows in the northeastern summer Now: the swirling tempest of a Gulf Shore September I'm nailing plywood to the window frames God protect this parish, so close to the shoreline And so far from the Minnesota plains and Scandinavian names The Lutheran faith, it ain't about hatred And it helps me stay clean and make friends I've learned to play the organ and I sleep in the church basement Am I happy? Well, I guess that all depends, depends on whether... When you win your Pulitzer for bravery in deed and writing And helping us all understand just why so many men die fighting And you rest your prosthetic on the podium, will you remember Love like the swirling tempest of a Gulf Shore September? |