Prospect Heights

It’s May, and Labor Day, as

Irish blessings meld with eastern

Europe’s wishing wells—Mácha’s love

brigade, ’midst cherry blossoms rife

from Tokyo to Jefferson’s lagoon,

if love defines the tides of how

a country comes to be. Meanwhile,

May secures modality—the should and

could and would of might and may,

the underlying undergrowth of

winter dreams in states of disarray;

summer’s quick to compensate:

heat and freedom demarcate the

ground control of budding, breaking

pestilence. Anticipate another

Labor Day, end of summer, start of

stacking wood—‘May roads rise up to

meet you’ as a gauge of doing good.

Lutherans know the road is less

mechanical, more a pebble in my shoe.

I heard this Godspell rhapsody

at Wagner’s, ’73, when ‘where are

you going’ meant vastly more than

what I’d count as true, starchy

famines we might labor through. May

God hold you in the palm of His hand.

May we see each other in familiar,

interim points-of-view. May we

shirk the politburo protocols and

weave instead the silken threads

we use to mark the liturgy, ‘finally glad

that you are here, by my side’—singing

softly to the child in me, May and

sometimes martial months as they’d

unfold, all told, graciously. I had

brothers, cousins, sister-on-the-way,

friends and dogs to guide me through

the machinations of a million signs

and what they try to say; I had two dads

and due theology to wordsworth poems

and plans; I had a thousand questions

for John 1:14. Whatever labor brings our

savior to ourselves, it’s cause to celebrate,

from cherry trees to routeless roads.

A pebble whispers, ‘take me with you,’

callouses and corns too readily reduced.

We know the footfalls hurt, but now

it’s First of May, with ample proof

we’re blessed along the way.