Roadside Petition After March Snow-Melt
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Roadside Petition After March Snow-Melt
Will-less, their future a fait accompli,they comically consecrate the road's still grassless lip
where they lie here and thereamong the little green flames of skunk cabbage
lined up like votive candles. They could beparables of lost sheep no one ever cared to look for—
this sweatshirt and sock, this onered high-heeled shoe, this rusted harmonica, and what
must have been a letter, now nearly word-less,winter's ink bled out. And now,
a Spiderman action figure with moveable arms.Lost and forgotten. Do you know
each of their stories, Lord,or is our sad story always the same?
If I stand Spiderman on his own two feet,digging them into the sodden earth, then raise
his two arms in petition, will you hear our prayer:Lord, help us to be done with our grieving. [End Page 108]
Robert Cording teaches on the faculty of the low-residency MFA at Seattle Pacific University after retiring from teaching English and creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross. He has published eight collections of poems, most recently Only So Far (CavanKerry, 2015), A Word in My Mouth: Selected Spiritual Poems (Cascade Books, 2013), and Walking With Ruskin (CavanKerry, 2010). He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, as well as several poetry grants from the Connecticut Commission for the Arts. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nation, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, Poetry, the Kenyon and New England Review, Orion, and The New Yorker. robert.cording@charter.net.
