Lapis

Lapins lazuli; blue bunnies, bluebonnets, lazily
Lazarus unwinds his sheets to the breeze,
to the Maypole girls. Maples match him, banner
to stinking shred. It's spring & literalminded Jesus'
trick has horrified the company.
Godforbid any such transgression again!

But let these twenty pastel minxes circulate &
plait their ribbons round the wretched man.
He was the Good Shepherd's crony. Coneys,
immigrant bunnies, once overran an
unimportant New World island, now whose amusement
park deteriorates by creaks & groans, even as Good

Shepherdess Bo-Peep, cherishing an idle crook, perfects
benign neglect: her charges also lost animals.
Our own young ladies weeks ago doffed azure Easter
millinery & settled down to plot a Memorial
Day parade, but here staggers-ever-onwards Lazarus,
grisly enough to distress any military festivity —

he belongs in a hole in the ground
(mammal burrow, huddled up with the babies).

Copyright © 2003 Martha Zweig All rights reserved
from Northwest Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission