FAITH AS FISH

As you swim, it glides beside you, seeming
to grow with each sweep of your arms, each leg
kick’s brief wake as your slick body, gleaming
in dawn light, slides through rough sea, your vestige
of flesh somehow one with harsh waves as you
alter from crawl to breaststroke, butterfly,
your limbs now fire, lungs and mouth start to spew
steam as you dive, corner of your right eye
sensing form swell—angelfish to dolphin
to blue whale as you drive deeper down, down,
buoyancy lurching to grab hold, drag thin
body back to air, now caught in hole-blown
swell lifting you, force a sudden surprise,
your limp frame warm in caress of its rise.

Roger Armbrust
August 30, 2008

DENVER AIRPORT AT DUSK

Rockies’ peaks form Goliath’s ruptured spine
after the fall, their distant silhouette
also his dried-blood lower jaw, divine
images altering with this sunset’s
varied moods, seeming to fade behind bold
mountains, then blazing anew, fire mirrored
in vast cloud cluster, furnace to drive cold
from heaven. Now scarlet. Now Persian red.
And now this mammatus canvas recalls
Pillars of Creation—lustered columns
of dust crowning Eagle Nebula—sprawled
across starry space like lava. Solemn
as priest and nun at sunrise, we would gaze
through telescopes, deep breaths our humble praise.

Roger Armbrust
August 27, 2008

BAHÁ'U'LLÁH

Your banishment map covers four countries,
price of accepting the Báb. In Tehran’s
underground dungeon, as visionary
you hear mystical voice of the maiden
call you “he whom God shall make manifest.”
At Baghdad’s Garden of Ridván, among
fan-shaped palms and mute faithful, you profess
your messiah’s mission—soft, inspired tongue
singing obedience, reason, and love.
From Constantinople, the Ottomans
and Persians see the Bábi split. They shove
you to Akká’s prison. Bahji’s mansion
will house your final years, captors at ease
at last with your preachings, your piercing eyes.

Roger Armbrust
August 10, 2008

CLEANSING

This water runs across my hands like air
over alveoli’s purified beds
of capillaries. This warm water flares,
reflecting light, forming gleaming stream fed
by the hydrogen bond. This bubbling flow
of water, earth’s master solvent blending
with alkali and fatty acids, glows
with globes of soapsuds, their clusters mending
my fingers’ sins, my palms’ reflexive greed,
my angry knuckles’ bare, slashing assaults.
This splashing, filmy water seems to plead
for grace, praying my life drains free of fault
as my soft, forgiven grasp enfolds you,
night’s rain praising my blessed gift to hold you.

Roger Armbrust
August 9, 2008

BEAST

Love, you’ve watched me at my preying levels:
lower vertebrate like shark, my angry
mouth a seething spiracle. I’ll grovel
like leech to anesthetize as I try
to swallow you whole. I fear my bête noire,
drowning in black bile, fierce insanity
gazing in mirror, fancying a gar
reciting Hitler—epic vanity.
Yet you, my wise Metis, cunning magic
flowing from your fingertips, encircle
your lithe frame with gleaming steel. No tragic
end. You heal black humor with miracle
of wit. Sing how I’m the good shepherd’s lamb
(not the ass of burden we know I am).

Roger Armbrust
August 07, 2008

QUIVERING SILHOUETTES

This monstera leaf shaped like sea-green heart
grasps sun through Catherine and Eric’s wall
of living-room windows, creating art
of quivering silhouettes on a pall
of golden yellow like a cardiac
X-ray revealing flexing mitral valve
and papillary muscles’ last contracts,
or now shaggy felt uterine wall halved
by a single brave sperm, head and long tail
like a twitching bean sprout. And suddenly
I recall candlelit night we regaled
our daughter’s conception, eyes silently
deciding to make life, bodies kneeling,
quivering silhouettes on the ceiling.

Roger Armbrust
August 4, 2008

BELOVÉD

Plato, knowing of guardian angels,
leads Socrates to cite them in Phaedo
as guides. Job speaks of go-betweens. Michael
appears in prophet Daniel’s book. And so
we stand together again, our bodies
whole and blessed, no doubt led to each other
through these keepers of all humans, at ease
with our softest touch despite vanished years,
our flesh and tears so far from sight. Perhaps
we called upon these nurturing spirits
in our youth, not knowing honesty as
prayer. But patrons know. Let’s say they hear it
in our laughter. Surely your grace delights
protectors’ eyes, always with God in sight.

Roger Armbrust
August 1, 2008