Three Poems

William Coleman

Christenings
—for Tristan Seraphim Filbert

Tristan, you'll never know how deep your blessings go.
But once you plunged, anointed, bare, and emerging
for air, your tears remembering the pure pool's eye,
you were cleansed. You'd seen the source,
traced by hand onto water, and broke its tension
with your touch. You were water that day, Tristan,
rising to fill empty space.

Still, you will doubt. When you do, allow the rain
to speak for you. There is nothing
on this earth worth more than the rain.
Let it whisper your questions as it falls.
Let the water pool around you once more.
You've swum these depths before and returned
sanctified. You'll do it again, when you must.
You must.

Visitation

Sudden mother to the son of man, she
wandered down to the garden
where she found among the stubble
a small sack of grain. All day she fed
the birds—hundreds—that came,
their hard beaks hurting her open, emptying hand.

Saturday Night in the Tomb

I like to imagine Him dancing there,
testing his limbs' limits once more, fitting
back into his body the way we might
slip back again into a forgotten
favorite shirt crumpled in the closet,
finding ourselves wrapped in an old love's
scent and remembering the moonflowers
opening in our gaze, steadying
for another long, glorious night of worship.
That's the God I believe in—the one
who can't wait to roll back the rock, leave nothing
behind, make an appearance everywhere,
yet who still loves these nights alone, the cool
darkness of His room, that sweet, solitary
music that keeps Him humming long after the dying's done.

Visit William Coleman as Image Artist of the Month for May 2002

Issue #22 • Winter/Spring '99