Good Friday 2014
dream exodus


The red-headed league was up ahead,
assorted kin behind.
The elder Sonny was floating,
harnessed to a kite in flight.
We five in the middle walked and limped
except when we could not,
surgeries one by one begun
to replace that which was lost,
to fix the damage done.
And so we took turns traveling in
two box-store battery-powered go-carts,
an exodus of the wounded from hell.

Our caravan thus slogged on
till we touched the borderline.
(a fenced-in Cerberus
had only one barking head
He growled and jumped
and we said, ‘good job’
but stepped out far and wide.)
We imagined a safe Passover
and Christ without a cross
a world without circumcisions
a boat without the pistol
that hurt wildlife of the sea
and hoped we all would fare well anew.
We paid the invisible ferryman
for the crossing
each of us one coin
and bid tearful adieu to the dead
as they faded away.
Twin infants were born
and named: Lily and Beth,
our unmarked newborns,
innocents traveling forward
with the exodus parade.