A Poem: Orion The Hunter

He stands in my doorway

like a cross.

The hunter has come down.

He walks me under street lights

which are more sullen and yellower

than the full moon - its cool

blind eye of bone

and fracture high high above.

His bronze face pure

with starlight or anger

or perhaps love.

"The world

will never be your idea of just

or merciful."

It all seems one

and I feel it

like an arrow’s blade

at the division between

bone and muscle,

soul and spirit,

like hunger

but more like the craving

after beauty

that is only for brief

apocalyptic

moments satisfied.

Tense

as a bowstring, the

artistry of one straight line,

he walks away

and under the moonlight

is one motion,

flowing up like a spring

from the tendon of the heel.

This poem owes a debt to poet Mary Oliver, who wrote a poem about the constellation Orion coming down out of the sky to talk to her. As I remember it, her poem had some truly lovely lines, calling Orion "our gloomy and passionate teacher," and "his voice is like bones breaking."

So in my poem the figure of Orion is God. This piece is about me growing up - the necessity of facing the fact that the world is full of evil and injustice, while still holding onto my identity as a person with a moral compass, a person who can relate to God in the midst of an unjust world. It is about the balance in life between knowing that "things just aren't fair" and living as an individual with integrity anyway. To be a whole person, I think one has to come to terms with these two sides of life.

It is also inspired by my habit of long late night walks, sometimes talking to God about the troubles of the world, and sometimes just being with him.