Ritual   

A lone turkey struts on our back porch

picking at droves of sunflower seed shells

for we have been solacing the persistent

birds all winter and now it is spring.

 

The last frozen piles of plowed snow

are shrunken, dirty reminders of cold.

Through the window I can see a cluster

of green fans, the ground vines are awake.

 

I realize that this day of portent I believed

once when young and obedient, especially

the clock at three. I fasted in aspiration

of the sacrifice. But I questioned always.

 

Now the world is as miraculous, but pagan.

I believe in the rise of green shoots from mould.

I believe in the glory of my own existence.

I know the absolutes of living mortal and moral.

 

A ritual of childhood compels me to dye ellipsoids,

symbols of fertile life in beet juice,

little suns in blood without the need for death.

I do not slay the lone stalker to propitiate a god.

 

But my own old fixated belief in heaven

has a new virulent cascade in the world.

The new rituals are destructive of human life,

of all mortals who do not bow to the one true faith.

                                                                                                    Virginia Walker