Diane Glancy
Everything You Must Do Be Bible
Migration is an act of going—
a journey of the travel—
an act of receiving knowledge on the way.
Be in before the gate is closed.
Be gone before the flowers grow.
I feel their roots
raging at the window.
They long for flight.
I cover the bird bites on my arms
but there is a spigot and garden tools.
Father
Father wears a robe of yak hair
with horns pointed upward from his chair.
The arms and back and legs are carved from gopher wood.
He has a hundred jump ropes he can jump.
His fleet has sails that are the eyes of fierce birds.
They follow ocean currents even in the worst gale.
He packs the ships with seeds for the New World.
He calls his believers to his holy land if they persevere
through hardship.
Sometimes whales get in the way.
He doesn’t leave his people if they drown.
See them at their own table off to the side?
I am that I am written on the Father’s tie.
On winter days
the ocean looks like a gray table in need of sanding
but then the sun comes out
and sheens the water with a light that always has been there.
Father travels to foreign ports.
He likes the crow’s nest above the sea.
At the moment
he has a splinter in his finger from stacking cordwood
behind his cabin where snow is to the windows
and he’s out there keeping the path clear.
New martyrs are coming for supper and they need a landing field.