Why I Like the Tomb
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPIt's peaceful, like the house where I grew up,
with the warm stone walls and the earth floor
I swept clean everyday with straw.
Outside, the cattle were lowing
and sometimes looking in with enormous eyes
like small, brown planets.
I don't know what I was afraid of.* * *Beyond the walls of the cave there is a garden.
The sun rises and sets and rises again.
Warblers fret in the brittle trees.
Sometimes I think I even hear the rustling
of the snake on its marvelous, oily scales!* * *The darkness. The blessed darkness.
Like the darkness of the garden
before they came with their torches,
the clamoring crowds and the soldiers
in their leather, jeering, too.
This darkness is what was made for us
and to this we all return.
The dry leaves of the olive trees.
The night breeze.
How the rabbit and the mouse
waited in the shadows,
perfectly still, watching us
with eyes like bright, black buttons.
Chris Anderson is Professor of English at Oregon State University and author or coauthor of 12 books, including a book of poems, My Problem With the Truth (Cloudbank, 2003). He is also a Catholic Deacon. canderson@oregonstate.edu
