As to the Kingdom

Picture an empty rowboat
under the night sky: a refuge,
our means of escape
in a vessel yet to be
filled—rocking,
beckoning—nudged along
by invisible currents . . . Or

                perhaps,

the kingdom is more like a man in the boat,
flat on his back in a dark place,
broken, alone—his oars,
shipped—taking in saving light
from a heavenly body that died
before reaching him . . . And

                this, as well:

the kingdom of God is a stranger
kneeling beside him, who says, Friend,
we are water stirred with love
and the siftings of spent stars.
It is like saying,

                Let the waves come . . .

then grasping a hand, becoming,
together, a constellation—perhaps
the next dipper, spilling
quicksilver, shore to shore.

--
Laurie Klein is the author of a chapbook (Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh) and two collections (House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life and Where the Sky Opens). A recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and a Pushcart nominee for poetry as well as prose, she lives on the brow of a rural hill overlooking an ancient apple tree and mercurial woodland pond. For the first time in thirty-four years, small green apples festoon the limbs. It feels like a sign . . .