Mastodawn

Pastor Edwards in Light

It was somewhere around here: that church
where, back in the day, a balcony dropped.
Riven off its notches by winter ice. Imagine!
Many fell; no one died, no bones were broken.
Was it a rebuke, a miracle? In that age, one
adopted convictions about such things.

Locals are helpful: we learn the church is gone.
But a trail threads off past stands of black birch
and we follow it a while; we pass meadows and ridges
and find an old rain-fed quarry. Should we
linger, have our lunch here? Already I feel
some sort of elegiac is being read-in

across the speed of our passing: I say
maybe we’re storing something for later.
This quarry: we could speak of it again
or choose to forget it. How does an age begin?
One naps; one opens a book and reads. One
learns we are all dangling above an obliterie

and later, near water, we think Yes it is like that
because the light remembers, wants completion in us.
We feel it, feel something, remembering the idea
of the interleaved particles, renewed by a great Consent.
All because we came across a few lines in a book.
It is curious; it could have been otherwise.

An unearned Eden? Hard to say…or believe…
But things crowd and surge; possibilities multiply.
We do love our tribal pageants. Under an artful
master, it can be hard to tell gods from men.
We wake in a fright; things are moving around us.
Devils where there had been none. Lunch.

Rip Underwood owned a dental lab for many years, but has retired and wishes to devote his energies to poetry. In Austin, he has volunteered with deaf clients and with developmentally disabled residents at the Austin State School. He has also volunteered at the local women’s shelter and for Victim Services in Austin. He is eager to explore a more inward artistic journey and to see if the work he has accumulated has a place in the world. His poems have been published in Volney Road Review, Change Seven Magazine, Poet’s Choice, Poetry Super Highway, and more.

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