Feed My Lambs Now
We city-dwellers don’t have to know
the habits and character of sheep to appreciate
this metaphor and that of the shepherd.
Of course, we city-dwellers build in imagination
on the sweet appeal of lambs in petting zoos,
wooly, white, the gentle muzzle, the large eyes.
But with respect, I think he could have also said:
Feed my puppies, high-pitched yappers.
Feed the strays and critters thrown away
on country roads.
Feed my wild horses, the mustangs, skittish
and vulnerable.
Don’t poison coyote and wolf in their places
in the kingdom’s cycle.
And more:
Feed the people of the world,
vulnerable, skittish, large-eyed.
Teach their children how to read, how to count.
Inoculate them against disease.
Dig village wells, and raise walls for houses and schools.
Listen to the stories they bring to the table.
Play your instruments, and learn their songs.
Dance with them.
Help bury them, and help birth them.
Weep and laugh with all persons.
This is the true food of the soul
—rice, poultry, bread, clean water, apples—
and all the exotic foods—chopsticks, fingers, forks—
that feed bodies of sisters and brothers.
For the food of compassion
and the food of service
are the taste of Heaven.
Arguing with Mike over the Definition
Your poem seems to turn on this one word.
Context is all: a verse, a confessional, a human
cry. Context is power. Of course, all that.
But that word, how vapid, how charming
like a viper trained to rise and stare
with all insomnia in its tooth.
Now you, a poet, claim its fullness, its usefulness,
and brush away the cliché tag I’d tie on it.
When I say it’s empty of power, you cite
millennia of popes who with souls full of prayer
are crowned in power that means something
in the world, too. When did soul last mean
what it meant? I wonder aloud if we could consult
the little brown monk alone with his radishes
and runner beans who counts the vesper tolling
and then wraps again into the shawl of the night
silence. So now it’s too late for academic debate,
and the faithful monk won’t say. (He’ll remember
this in the morning.) I struggle for a catechism
about the mortal fight and more, how the rags
of our lives clothe this abstract with romantic
bouquets and heartfelt sighs. And then you say,
Yes, we turn on that magic like a light bulb
to mean the center of things. I won’t interrupt
you as you recite the tropes: lovers open souls,
poets peer into souls, clerics count souls. I may
say later, a lot later, what a difficult rhyme:
one syllable: roll troll pole scroll droll stroll
