A Superior Mirage Is a Particular Refraction of Light Caused by a Temperature Inversion, Which Explains How That Man in Cornwall Saw a Giant Tanker Hovering in Midair Above the Sea
It’s Easter today, and when I wake
I shuffle the jukebox of my mind
and lay the needle down on the hymn I sang
once a year growing up, the one with the lovely
long open Alleluia, the one that rhymes today
with day, which scratched at me even decades back,
but I loved the gladness of the song, loved
my dresses, always the wrong material for April
on the East Coast but billowy over the heating grate,
loved the wire cross into which all the kids would poke
the long green stems of daffodils and lilies
until what had been cold and rigid was now
a garden, a soft riot of yellow and purple.
My children do not know the Lord’s Prayer.
My children do not know the doxology.
Once, at my small college, I played Jesus on stage;
there were only so many tenors, and I could hit
the high notes, plus I had long brown hair.
I sang I will drink your cup of poison and meant it
as the hot lights glared against my face.
I meant everything then. Now I have children.
I have a job. I can’t be contorting nightly
into spot-lit weeping. When my children ask questions,
I try to answer them truthfully, which means
admitting to failure. I don’t know, I say
again and again. And, Some people believe
X. Some believe Y. Yes, I say,
I hope for that. Or, No one knows.
This morning in the shower I tuned myself to the hymn and tried to know. What could I
hold in my hands and trust in its weight?
What felt true like a peach or an old paperback?
I believe there was a man.
I believe terrible things happened.
I believe we should care for each other.
My children don’t know the Apostles’ Creed.
I don’t tell them the story of the stone,
and if I ever do, I’ll call it the story. I miss
my billowing dresses. I miss the lilied
cross. What do I know? Who’s to say
the tanker, shimmering in the sky, wasn’t really
a ghost ship, freighted with our dead
and our longings, pausing over the sea
between worlds as if to say goodbye
or hello, as if to remind us that no answer
can be as good an answer as any, or better?
Catherine Pierce is the poet laureate of Mississippi and the author of four books of poems, most recently Danger Days (Saturnalia). An NEA Fellow and two-time Pushcart Prize winner, she co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.
