Within your arches, I am moon and corn.
    Church where winter crows, church of souls
    that wear shoes, church of birds playing hopscotch.
    My tribes and your thighs' rivers are one.
    O altar of horses and sweat,
    O hymns where corn marries braille.
    Look at the flowers dangling their knees from the pews
    of your shoulders, the hundred brides
    that sprout from your wine's gauntlet.
    A thousand solitudes light on your brow's nave
    where they kneel like lost soldiers
    and ask to forget the mothers whose haycarts bled,
    and ask for brides to kiss their burdens,
    and ask, and are granted, shoes
    that have known neither hunger nor death.

Copyright © Eva Skrande, 2002.  All Rights Reserved.