Gail White
ARMADILLO WISDOM
The armadillo having brains
enough to burrow when it rains,
will huddle in his deep abode
and never try to cross the road.
In muted armadillo tongue
he tries to warn the heedless young
that like the turtle and the toad,
all things are squashed that cross the road.
His nephew, to his lasting loss,
finds out the truth half-way across,
and views with stunned and useless wrath
the 18-wheeler in his path.
Another longs to take a bride—
see females on the other side.
He finds the road is thick with ice.
O that he’d followed good advice!
But it’s no solitary fate
to find our elders wise too late.
We all have baggage to unload,
and shells to leave beside the road.
EUPHORIC IN ESSEX
A Queen-besotted Anglophile,
I lived in Essex for a while,
a flowering county that would yield
the perfect village: Finchingfield.
An ancient graveyard breathing peace,
a village pond for ducks and geese,
three pubs where cronies meet by chance—
the Hart, the Green Man, and the Manse—
a Gothic church with Norman font:
what more could any tourist want?
There, as I drank a last brown ale
and watched across the Essex dale
a sunset like the Book of Kells,
the village ringers rang the bells.
How many years had I withstood
the truth that life, though brief, was good?
Life was the light that touched the weald
and rang the bells of Finchingfield,
bending a crescent smile on men
as “Plain Bob Major” pealed again.
The words “cheap grace” may come to mind,
but is there any other kind?
SEA SOULS
All things susceptible to pain
possess an embryonic brain,
and howsoever crude their thoughts
they have an afterlife of sorts.
The floating seaweed turns at last
to deathless coral rooted fast;
the speckled trout in leaping sees
a vast eternity of trees;
the flounder destined for the plate
with upward gaze can smile at fate
for nothing torn from ocean’s lair
has such a charming soul meuniere.
The placid porpoise when it dies
obtains a glimpse of paradise.
The urchin stranded on the sand
completely fails to understand
its purpose in the scheme of things.
The jellyfish serenely stings
the toes within its dying grip,
and dreams it stuns a battleship.
But far above them looms the whole
great bulk of Whale’s cetaceous soul.
Its candid nature can but hope
a better world will give more scope
for intellect that has no hands
and song no earth-child understands.
Surely the angels’ choir will quail
before the hymns of heaven’s Whale.
CLOAKROOM TALK AT THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON
If we’re to put the Arians down,
we must have Egypt with us.
What do the Egyptians want?
They want a mother goddess.
They’ve always hated letting go
of Isis, the great mother.
There are the Ephesians, too.
They would like another
such as Syrian Artemis.
Under her they prospered.
Father-Son is all we have
What deal can we offer?
How would Mother Mary do?
True, she was only
one of us, but we could make
her titles grand and lofty.
Theotokos, God-Bearer
has a certain ring.
Like Demeter, she can claim
her lost child every spring.
Father-Son, Mother-Son,
two divine pairs!
That would steal the thunder
of Isis and peers.
So they whispered in the porch,
and the vibrations
of their deal have passed into
the coin of conversation.
Whispers haven’t changed much.
The only way that creeds
are changed is by a bargain struck
with strong but aging gods.
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