There Are Things We Are Not Meant to See
       

        Twelve of them stood lit in white, the rest in pale green, as if for a
film set, all of them dressed in Old West clothes, the boys in starched
shirts, each girl in a robe-length dress, & the old ones, too: men in wide
black belts, their wives (shoes like bJack loaves, black bows in their
hair). All the scene tinged green, & they came down to the shore as if
this was the day they'd lived for, been lit for, & the green ones went to
the ones in white, took each by the hand, raised them up in Christ, they
said, then hurled them in, & not one of the whites threw out his arms
to swim, not one looked back as the swift flow took them & one by one
were gone.
        And as they passed, what was white of them went more white,
seemed somehow to singe the eyes of all the rest, who turned from
them & climbed back to where they'd come from, up the bank, to a
place we thanked our own God we could not see.
        We lay in wait for night, then came out from the trees.

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Copyright © 2017 Gerald Fleming All rights reserved
from One
Hanging Loose Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission