To Be Brought to Water
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Of the sunken barge in the water where life has taken root, we know the moral.
We know where there is waste something can be profited. We know for nature there is no waste.
Only opportunity. That is the charge you granted us, early in the garden, before we ducked behind the elephant ear
to hide our nakedness. That was the first charge, at least. The second: that we’d never forget.
We know that all we realize is derivative of your love. That everything we know will not eliminate what we don’t:
why parade this beauty in our faces? Why make desirable the bones of the men who must have embraced
the night the barge slipped under? Forgive me, Father. I am human. That means I have an ego.
That means I can’t find solace in the tree that now commands this ship, the branches stretched and twisted as your love,
although they also, like the bones, make me choke. [End Page 999]
Rickey Laurentiis, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, is studying for the MFA in creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have appeared in jubilat, Indiana Review, Tidal Basin Review, and many other journals.
