James Ragan
The Sin-Son
1.
I was born leap-frogging
rimes
through space on a swinging rope.
I was drawn to dance
through songs I could not sing,
for whose dark spirits of the Slovak mind
I could not bring an offering,
nor the wit
to save humanity. In confessionals
before a swelling gibbous moon,
the monks
had moored the guilt’s needle in my mind.
In youth my father taught me
how in a list of possessions,
forgotten dreams would come to feast,
that pride should fast
as humbly
as a finch on crabapples. Here
was the spirit who would link all thought
as human to my nature,
innocent as the girl at recess
whose breast the wind undressed by whistling.
Larks rained down for lunch.
I needed no reminding it was spring.
2.
How untimely then the winter
fall of ash on a Baghdad leaf,
to gain the world and lose ambition.
Our body rhythms stopped
abruptly in the center of motion
like the end of summer
when the spider floats belly down
inside a crystal light pool,
staring at the floor’s deep image
of its reflection
no longer swimming,
but longer still
in its tormented calm
it breathes in
the water, and the pool
skys its reflection
in images, always swimming,
never still.