SAINT JULIAN PRESS POET

SKIP RENKER

A MOMENTARY OBEDIENCE

 

How the laws must love us, my sweet––

Gravity, thermodynamics, whatever

Makes sunlight slant and creates

The splayed shadow of an aging oak,

This exact, never-to-be-repeated

Invitation to come out of the heat,

To look up through sober obedient

Branches, their leaves, I like to think,

Pleased by the wind, and a blue swath of sky

Sentient as you or me.  The implacable

 

Laws love one another, too--

No light without weight, no movement

Without time.  Though we will succumb

To the brutality of accident, or

To cancer, weakened hearts, even

Inner demons obeying the dictates

Of their natures, right now there’s this

Never-to-be-repeated moment,

So let us, love, lie down on the grass

In the cool shade of its mercy.