Today's poem is by Tina Schumann

Self-Portrait with Blacktop, Heron, and Doubt
       

I thought I might start believing in God. Not again, but for the first time.
Stationed like a toll booth at the turnpike of life. The tombstone roses

and brittlebush murmured it to me; Go ahead, congregate, press your palms together
and really concentrate. Pray on it if you will. The road behind me rolled out black

with ice over a patchwork landscape; Pine Barrens to my left, the Berkshires
looming up ahead, and what with the culture wars raging in every parish

and facts as fickle as the siroccos headed my way, I figured why not?
I've weathered many a denial. Why not one more? I'm good at it.

§

The great blue herons in Commadore Park build their rookeries
on blind faith in the long arms of alders that waver over rushing waters.

Trusting in some obscure god to orchestrate —
they enter no temple to higher beings,

pay no homage to the river. Come and suffer
with the living they seem to say.

Become the willing wounded, bless the waters,
the road, the doubting self, the trembling clutch

of nests like a crèche of atonement,
and the robins on the parking strip

whistling "life!" "life!" "life!"

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Copyright © 2023 Tina Schumann All rights reserved
from One
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission