Virgin Appears on Highway Viaduct
The geese have no idea
they are performing a miracle
but the weekend joggers
stop, transfixed:
Can they really walk on water?
My father didn’t
rise from the dead, either—
it just seemed that way,
between the garbled message
(no one said the EKG was flat,
that’s just what I heard) and the fear
that attends on eighty years.
And like the geese
who feel the solidity of ice
beneath the skim of water,
he took his resurrection
for granted, grumbling that he wanted
to go home, there was nothing
wrong. Nothing on the cement of the viaduct
except a water stain, nothing to celebrate
when the geese make it safely to shore, when my father
calls to complain that the power’s out again;
nothing but the daily turn of the skies
above us, and the moment each year
when the lagoon is covered in ice,
before the moment each year when the ice
melts into water and the geese can swim again.
by Susanna Lang
And like the geese
who feel the solidity of ice
beneath the skim of water,
he took his resurrection
for granted, grumbling that he wanted
to go home, there was nothing
wrong.
This sticks with me; it’s the heart of the poem. Nice work.