James Green has published four chapbooks of poetry (Stations of the Cross, with Finishing Line Books; The Color of Prayer, with Shanti Arts Books; and Barely Still, Barely Stirring, with Finishing Line Books; and Long Journey Home, with Georgia Poetry Society). His individual poems have appeared in literary journals in Ireland, the UK, and the USA. He resides in Muncie, Indiana.
Isaac Returns to the Mountain
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there
and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar,
on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
Genesis 22:9-11 (KJV)
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)
I come here often, always in the cool of morning
before the clutter of the day invades the hour,
where the wind whispers and streaks of dawn
rinse the mountains purple across Moriah.
They speak to me, this hour and this place,
arousing memory that is a voiceless prayer
and bares necessary truths that make
for a separate hard-won peace.
Here is the shrub where father tied the donkey
laden with wood for the fire and I said, “But father,
you forgot the lamb,” and where he answered,
“God provides,” evading truth with ambiguity,
a recourse I have learned myself and use often.
Over there is where I asked again of the lamb;
Although, by then I knew. And there is the rock
where he bound me. Yes, it is true.
And beyond is where he found the ram, its horns
tangled in the brush, after the angel came, after I,
breathless with fear, saw the knife drop to the ground
and father bury his face in his hands mumbling words
I could not hear, a prayer perhaps, over and over
while he sobbed and I, my hands still tied behind my back,
still cowering on the altar, waited in stopped time
as I stared at the knife in the dust.
All that was long ago:
Now the years have dimmed my eyesight
and the dull ache in my bones make the trail a hard one.
Yet I come. I come as one does to a grave, with flowers,
in need of some presence beyond memory, to listen again
to the comfort of my father’s voice, to bury any regrets
that still collect as sediment in my heart,
to know even as also I am known.
This poem was awarded first prize in the Illinois State Poetry Society 2020 Free Verse category and subsequently published in Catholic Poetry Room.
Sparks Fly Upward
Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust,
neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
yet man is born unto trouble,
as the sparks fly upward.
Job 5:6-7 (KJV)
Humped over my books at night, reason will not help me,
nor desire, so I take my groundless grief into the darkness
where fireflies escape like sparks soundlessly from a crease
between the shadows of trees and my moon lighted lawn.
Light from the lamp on my desk, a floor above where I stand,
spills wasted to the ground and I regret the yellow cast it leaves
on the grass in need of rain, onto the thin skin of earth
that does not, I am told, hold the First Cause of affliction.
I listen again, being born unto trouble, scheming of ways
to explain the morality of God, and strain against the silence
of blank space between star-sparks echoing light
where I hope against evidence of tomorrow’s dust.
Daedalus Laments Icarus
Airborne he learned his wings worked their own magic.
Thermal currents, with the gentle rhythmic hunching
of his shoulders (the way I instructed him) did the work of flight,
having perfected the systems’ mechanics in tests myself,
although I warned him of the limitations of the adhesives.
First he circled the labyrinth, taunting our captors,
delighting at the sight of the tiny guards shaking their fists,
their arrows dangling in mid-air before falling back to earth,
that horrible man-bull thing rutting the lawn with its hooves,
the king stomping back and forth, cursing the sky.
Trying to be practical in all matters, I pointed the way
of a straight course toward the coast on the horizon,
but I saw Icarus feel the rush of flight, the flesh of his face
pressed taut by the wind, smiling from the kiss of sunlight
on the nape of his neck. First, he tried a few steep banks,
then loops, then, a high-velocity dive, pulling up in time
to buzz fishing boats, whitecaps lapping at his feet,
before climbing again, higher and higher, warnings forgotten
from a memory that held only the last instant of exhilaration,
higher than the gulls to where the island was hidden in its mist.
No one saw him fall but I; the fishermen didn’t notice.
But what I saw still haunts, the flailing arms and legs
splashing soundlessly into the sea, feathers floating
on the dark surface like petals scattered on a grave,
finally the crest of a plush wave, swallowing him.
They say that grief takes time, that first you make your peace
with the gods and then you make a separate peace with yourself.
Those who say so never saw their sons fall from the sky,
never gave their sons wings to fly to their deaths.
It is more of a cease-fire, not at all the same as peace.
True, the wings I invented were the means of our escape;
but eventually one grows weary of paradox and he wants to feel
what he feels, wants to face the face that still hovers in vapor
over the water and touch lost time again, wants to speak
what only can be spoken in silence long after it is too late.