Good Friday, Holy Saturday

                                                                                    Mary Suchocka Kostrzewski

                                                                            January 26, 1880 – January 13, 1972

            

             Outside the church

             on city cement, women walk

             on both knees up the steps

             through the foyer

             past holy water and ushers.

             These women make their own way

             solid as potatoes

             to the priest with his soft

             white cloth and soft white hands

             caressing the stone cold  Jesus. 

             It is hard to kneel

             in one spot for even a short time

             and this journey is 500, 600, 700 feet,

             maybe more, on bare tile.

             The women never put their knees

             on the white linen runner

             crawling quiet as vegetables.

             My mother and I walk upright until just a few

             feet from the holy goal, modern cheats

             but my Busia Mary, a woman of the old school, bruises her knees

             the whole distance from the street.

             Bundled against spring’s cold

             in shawls and babushkas,

             wearing thick cotton stockings

             under cotton dresses

             here they come, down

             the frankincensed aisle

             knees homing in, breaking

             their belief at the priest’s feet

             like eggs, like bread.

 

 

              © Christina Pacosz

                                                                We Call Her Forth

 

 

                        She Who

                        in the morning

                        arrives   

 

                                 Venus!  

                                 Artemis!  

                                 Diana!

 

                                 Old animal mother

                                 from before

                                 these ones

 

                        besotted with blue

                        ecstatic from coupling

                        with lightning.

 

                        Deer-hide girl

                        of the hunt

                        a hint of starlight

 

                        in her eye

                        carrying a bow

                        a quiver of arrows

 

                        Her flesh

                        the mutilated

                        earth.

 

 

                        © Christina Pacosz

          

 

                                                               Triumphant Trumpeter

 

 

                    Ancient mummer!

 

                    Your call

                    stitches spring

                    to lingering winter,

                    wings beating the lake,

                    needles knitting

                    sky and water

                    into something old

                    and wild.

 

 

                    © Christina Pacosz     

 

                                                    

                  Spring Shorts

 

 

                       1.

 

                       The sun rises,

                       a golden wheel.

                       Geese fly

                       and are not burned

                       by molten light.

 

 

                       2.

 

                       Snow!

 

                       Bleeds hope

                       like a stake

                       through the heart.

                      

                       Impossible to believe

                       it will melt.

 

                    

                       3.

 

                       While you learn to speak

                       the language of swans

                       and I, to love

                       what is difficult,

                       the world and its terrible

                       intimacy of strangers

     

                       is always with us.

                    

 

                       © Christina Pacosz

      

 

                                                                     Alligator Moon

 

 

                    You are

                    another world

                    basking

 

                    in the sun.

                    March breeze

                    whistling down

 

                    peaks and valleys

                    of your skin.

                    O dragon

 

                    of black

                    impenetrable water,

                    scales fall

 

                    from my eyes.

                    O bodhisattva

                    of perfect stillness

 

                    I want to kneel

                    and worship.

                    O  African dream.

 

                    Later,

                    a full moon rises

                    and I

 

                    imagine you,

                    beast bathed in silver.

                    Your reptile heart

 

                    beats a cool

                    night rhythm,

                    remembering

 

                    snowy egrets

                    flying in a hot

                    blue sky.

 

 

                    © Christina Pacosz

 

  

 

                                                         In a Cranny of the Roof

 

 

             1.

   

             Long before dawn the chorus begins,

             no longer silent eggs, but naked beaks

             and empty stomachs, screeching

             as a parent bumps into the gloom.

             The scent of food wakes them,

             and their insistent cries wake me.

 

             2.

         

             The bird book notes

             starlings are common and prolific,

             the species introduced

             to the ‘New World.’

 

             3. 

 

             I imagine a middle-aged figure, thin,

             receding chin, starched collar and stiff

             cuffs.  His hands, narrow and small

             for a man, reach into a wicker cage

             and stroke a mated pair

             into the clasp of the wide open air

             and the birds fly

 

             into the Eden of America a century ago,

             settling on a branch, a fence,

             any convenient perch

             to reconnoiter freedom.

 

             4.

 

             I admit there are birds with more

             presence:  crow, hawk, owl,

             or finer plumage:  the pheasant rising        

             from the road, a flame at dusk

             but I admire

             what comes to a new place

             from far away

             and flourishes.

 

 

             © Christina Pacosz