Blood of Abraham

Blood of Abraham Reginald Shepherd (bio) Who built grief’s penetralium? Solomon knows. His wisdom is division. For whose sake the forays in faith and trembling, armed marches from that high city into exile’s himan of chaff and prophesy? Ask the singer of Ziklag. Dust is on his tongue, his harping fingers, and the voice touched into kingship is choking dust on a simoom. A virgin for a stricken king sick of battle. One after another the battles, won and thrown away, the ever-renewed oil of siege. And to the west the bondage and gold animals, limestone and alabaster restored to dust. So wander through deserts like orphans, singing in the sand of sight. Even His retreating back burns the eyes. At the border of the promised country the fatal kiss: citadels surround the sheltering domes at twilight when you arrive. Ask the queen who stole an ark, she is black but comely, ask the one who sat at the right hand, now chosen to stray barefoot with her people. Draw me,we will run after thee. Jerusalem my love. And Ophir is mapped in ash on a western wall, Ophir and Lebanon in cedar and smashed wings. Brief days of honeyed milk, and then to roam, laments bending from willow branches by the burning river, bowed trees blossoming with psalms and incense. All to come under the shadow of the darkening plumes where the Lord resides with His terrible hand, the mark of blood on the lintel preserves. The King hath brought me into His chamber. Reginald Shepherd Reginald Shepherd teaches at Northern Illinois University. His first book of poems, Some Are Drowning, won the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry. A 1995 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he is also author of Angel, Interrupted, a second volume of poems. Copyright © 1998 Charles H. Rowell

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