poem22 Jun 2020 08:00 am

The Shadow and the Sacred

The Sacred Hawk of the Land of the Gods appears as a good omen (cropped), Utagawa Kunimasa V

Jennifer Crow

for Anne
At first glance, the two don’t have much in common:
the places cast into darkness, and the objects,
rituals, locations which bring the divine close. Yet hope
grows in the interstices where fact hasn’t crowded it
out of sight, the liminal moments that drift
like a feather from the clouds, perhaps an angel
or maybe a hawk striking the killing blow.
This juxtaposition sometimes jars, the sharp edges
of the world ground to smoothness over a lifetime
of doubt—yet we take comfort even in the hawk’s
fierce triumph, the bloodied talon clenched tight
on its morsel of flesh, our own hunger sated
for a moment when we recall the fragile and broken.
We too have crouched, shattered, in the shadows
and waited to catch the eyes of gods.
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